Housing minister Alok Sharma has called for the "diversification of the housebuilding project" in order to tackle the "broken housing market". "We need all types of builders - the private sector, social housing, local authorities, custom builders, SMEs, build to rent and MMC. We need to build for sale, for rent and for shared ownership."
Speaking at today's (October 5th) Housing Market Intelligence conference in London, Sharma called on the larger builders to do more in terms of supply and said that it was imperative to reverse the reduction in the numbers of SMEs.
"The housebuilding industry is less productive than the main economy," he said. "It has been slow to modernise and make use of new techniques - modern methods of construction can help ease the skills crisis."
He argued that the industry was fragmented vertically and needed to directly employ more people and that the decision to leave the EU would be an opportunity to invest in the workforce.
