Addressing the UK’s housing crisis: A look into CMA’s housebuilding report
A new report from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has concluded the housing crisis is caused by failed planning processes and a lack of government support.
CMA’s new research, which took 12 months to conduct, has finally addressed what we’ve all been thinking. Whilst looking into the state of the housebuilding industry in England, Scotland and Wales, the government-owned organisation have concluded that ‘the housebuilding market is not delivering well for consumers and has consistently failed to do so over successive decades.’
To address this, CMA, an organisation designed to help people, businesses and the economy by promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour, make several recommendations, including establishing a new homes ombudsman ‘as soon as possible, and setting a single mandatory consumer code so homeowners can better pursue homebuilders over any quality issues they face’.
In addition, the report, which was published yesterday, also recommends encouraging councils to adopt amenities on all new housing estates and the introduction of enhanced consumer protections for homeowners on existing privately managed estates – including making it easier for homeowners to switch to a more competitive management company.
Commenting on the findings, Rico Wojulewicz, head of policy and market insight for the National Federation of Builders (NFB) and House Builders Association (HBA), said: ‘The CMA report has confirmed that a broken planning process is the reason we have a lack of social housing, why big builders build too many of our new homes and SMEs are shut out, that homes are in the wrong places and too expensive, there are some issues with quality, and we don’t do placemaking.
‘None of this is new or uncontroversial but the UK needed this CMA report to keep hammering home the reality that politicians of all colours are the reason we have a housing and placemaking crisis. It’s time they stopped blaming builders and instead, were held accountable for the mess they have caused and keep causing.’
Against this backdrop, Richard Beresford, chief executive of the NFB has said the report has ‘correctly identified that the UK planning system does the opposite’ of enabling homes.
‘Planning should be enabling homes, better places and competition which benefits not just Britain, but the British consumer. The CMA has correctly identified that the UK planning system does the opposite,’ Richard said.
Image: Avel Chuklanov
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