Lords housing inquiry will look at case for diversifying sector

The peer leading a House of Lords inquiry into housing delivery has said there may be a case for measures to encourage smaller developers to build a greater proportion of the country’s homes.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe, chair of the new House of Lords Built Environment Committee, told Building Design’s sister title Housing Today that she will look at the impact of “encouraging smaller builders back to the supply point” as part of the committee’s inquiry into barriers restricting housing delivery. She said they were often more easily able to take on smaller or difficult to develop sites.

“You get some innovation and vibrancy and they do things that perhaps a bigger builder would not do,” she said. “Historically there’s quite a lot of smaller builders who have fallen by the wayside.”

Baroness Neville-Rolfe stressed that the cross-party committee would look at the facts around smaller house builders’ delivery of homes before making any recommendations.

Neville-Rolfe, who said she “comes from a family of architects” and whose uncle worked on Welwyn Garden City, also said it was important that the design of homes being pushed through under the new planning system “very much fit into the local area”.

“It is a lot easier to get development accepted and supported if you have got the right sort of design,” she said, in an echo of the government’s rationale for its Building Better Building Beautiful Commission.

Design is only number eight on the inquiry’s to-do list (see box below).

The wide-ranging inquiry, announced yesterday, will look at factors affecting the type, tenure and quality of housing and investigate barriers to meeting current and future housing demand. It will make recommendations to the government later in the year.

It will examine the government’s 300,000 annual homes target and consider “how to balance housing types within that demand”, said Baroness Neville-Rolfe.

“Some work needs to be done on that balance, particularly if you look at demographic change…. we’ve got more single households, a growing population partly as a result of immigration in recent years, we’ve got older people wanting to move out into different housing”, she said.

Baroness Neville Rolfe said that the committee will not have the scope to look at the housing affordability crisis in depth. She said: “We will probably only be looking at affordability through the lens of demand and at the different types of tenures that might be required.”

She said that building more homes will in any case “affect the economics” governing house prices.

The inquiry will also focus on skills shortages and Baroness Neville-Rolfe said this would not be limited to frontline construction workers but would also focus on planners and required skills in digital construction and in delivering environmentally sustainable housing.

She said that construction skills policy does not appear to be “adequately joined up”with the Construction Leadership Council overseen by the Department for  Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) while the outcome of construction is owned by the Ministry of Housing Communities & Local Government.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe is also considering whether the committee should look at examples of modular house building innovations overseas where they can potentially bring down the costs of construction and improve the design of homes.

The committee has issued a public call for evidence. The deadline for responses is September 10.