Build to Rent urged
24 January 2024
Building more new homes for rent is one of the Construction Leadership Council’s requests to the Chancellor in advance of the Spring Budget due on 6 March.
In his letter to Jeremy Hunt, CLC Co-Chair Mark Reynolds suggests that more build to rent properties would relieve pressures on the private rental market. Such developments, he says, should pay the fair rate of stamp duty land tax (SDLT) for the price of units in the scheme, as the Multiple Dwellings Relief (MDR) has not worked properly since the introduction of the SDLT surcharges for additional dwellings and overseas buyers.
He says this must be fixed to ensure that MDR works appropriately for Build to Rent developments and that SDLT does not disproportionately impact on the viability of such projects.
Mark Reynolds states that while housing delivery has increased substantially with almost 1.2 million new homes built in the past five years alone, it is set to decline rapidly due to factors including the economic climate, nutrient neutrality, delays in the planning process and proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework.
The CLC suggests that the government should ring-fence any increases in planning fees for local authority planning departments to ensure planning department have increased resources following a real-terms funding cut by over half since 2010.
The organisation favours unlocking small sites for SME house builders, with the introduction of a presumption in favour of development outlook on such sites of up to 25 homes on brownfield, as part of the planned changes to the National Planning Policy.
The CLC also estimates that 11 million homes require greater insulation for heat pumps to be fitted to meet Net Zero targets and that, whilst current government plans support the social housing sector in this, there is a gap in the privately owned market. As the majority of these upgrades are delivered by SMEs, encouraging such upgrades would safeguard their pipeline of work.
The CLC says that the construction sector is worth 9% of GDP to the UK economy each year and employs in total just over 2.63 million people. Of the infrastructure and construction pipeline the government pipeline of projects 25-30% is public sector.
Photo: Matt Seymour/Unsplash
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