Estate agency makes recommendations to increase housing supply

The recommendations include boosting planning consents in high demand areas; increasing the supply of land; continued support for house builders and an increase in the building rate of local authorities and other bodies.

Despite an increase in the number of new homes starts over recent years, Savills reported that there still remains a shortfall. Savills compared "the three year average of consented residential units against the three year average of housing starts for each local authority." From the results they said they were able to establish that there was insufficient land available for residential development.

The report said there was the potential to build 205,000 new homes per year, an increase of 64,500 compared to the current rate, if the supply of development land and planning consents increased in areas of high demand.

The report proposed supporting "a wider mix of developers and organisations" to increase housing supply. Savills said its analysis showed that by 2020, local authorities have the potential to build 35,000 new homes and housing associations can build 10,000 homes per year. The report also predicted that a further 10,000 new homes could be built if the government supported companies which deliver build-to-rent homes.

A further proposal was to improve funding access for small and medium builders to increase their capacity and output. With greater funding, smaller building companies can employ more workers to complete larger developments, Savills said. The estate agency forecast that this could potentially deliver a further 50,500 new homes a year by 2020.

Planning expert Helen Stewart of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "We have seen one of the government’s proposals for increasing the supply of housing land through its continued acceleration of public sector land release. The key, however, is to convert these into planning consents and, ultimately, starts on site."

"Access to funding is one issue that affects small and medium sized house-builders," said Stewart. "Access to labour is one which affects the industry as a whole."

Rebecca Warren of Pinsent Masons added: "The industry as a whole, including house builders' trade body the Homebuilders Federation, have been very vocal for some months about the lack of skilled labour and the need to attract new recruits. Recruiting skilled female talent has also come into focus but traditionally building sites have not proven an attractive workplace, so more needs to be done to avoid ostracising 50% of the population who could provide part of the solution to the skills shortage."