Housing Secretary, Steve Reed MP’s reveal of a 15% rise in housing starts this year has been welcomed by a leading Liverpool City Region construction and civil engineering firm.
Sutcliffe CEO Sean Keyes told Downtown in Business members the ‘15 percent rise in housing starts is welcome, but the harder work begins now.’
“Whilst any uplift in delivery is a step in the right direction” said Keyes, “the harder question is whether the pace can be sustained over the remaining four years of this Parliament to deliver the promised 1.5million homes.
“Sutcliffe is involved in the design and delivery of around 5,000 homes a year, and what we are seeing on the ground tells us planning reforms are starting to translate into new activity with schemes previously stuck now beginning to move, as local authorities have a clearer basis on which to determine applications”.
But the Liverpool-based engineering firm warned that while a percentage rise is welcome, it is coming from a low base and doesn’t represent a return to the volume of housebuilding the country actually needs.
The UK is still building fewer than 200,000 homes a year while the forecast should be nearer 300,000.
Keyes also pointed to a deeper issue he believes is holding back house building – the skills shortage facing the construction and engineering profession.
The Royal Academy of Engineering has warned of a shortage of up to 1.5 million engineers by 2030 as nearly one in five of the current workforce approaches retirement. Without a pipeline of skilled professionals, Keyes and others believe sites simply cannot be designed, consented and delivered at the pace ministers are calling for.
“In our 40th anniversary year,” said Keyes, “Sutcliffe has committed to training 40 new engineers over the next decade.
“It is also why I continue to press the case for a serious national conversation about how we fund and encourage routes into the profession through apprenticeships and graduate schemes before the retiring cohort leaves the industry without replacements.
“The Housing Secretary restated his commitment to meeting the targets on national television this morning, and we welcome that. Planning reform is necessary, but so is honesty about the operational reality of getting homes built. The hard work now is delivering, and delivery of those homes depends on having the available skilled people who turn planning permissions into actual homes.”
