Embracing housing - the emerging political pre-election battleground

Wherever you are in the supply chain, housing development provides opportunity, says Antony Oliver.

Antony Oliver
18 June 2014

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Housing

Less than a year from the General Election and housing is clearly set to be a major political battleground across the UK. 

The simple fact is that as the economy returns to growth and permanent new jobs are created across the UK’s cities, the limiting factor increasingly becomes availability of decent housing around these new opportunities.

There are other issues of course that will also govern the ability of UK businesses to expand and drive growth, not least the much discussed availability of skills and transport networks. 

Wherever you sit in the infrastructure supply chain, whether you are a big firm, or specialist SME, housing investment brings opportunities. 

But there is nothing like housing to galvanise opinion and motivate voters. And the cynical might be forgiven for thinking that Chancellor George Osborne’s recent sweetener of potentially £500M to unlock vital brownfield sites across the regions is simply that.  

But from the infrastructure professional’s perspective the Treasury plan to kick start a fund that has the capability to help local authorities clean up 90% of brownfield sites by 2020 and so help release much needed urban development sites ready for developers to exploit, must be good news.

Easing of planning regulations and the creation of so-called “housing zones” with lighter touch planning regimes, will also have the potential to eat into the housing shortfall which it is estimated will require up to 260,000 homes to be built a year in the short term. 

It is good news because wherever you sit in the infrastructure supply chain, whether you are a big firm, or specialist SME, housing investment brings opportunities. 

As we note in Infrastructure Intelligence this week, Osborne’s announcement will bring growth to the ground investigation and clean-up businesses. But a major push into housing development prompts opportunity across the sectors – transport planning, energy supply, water management, building structures and services and property management. 

There is nothing like housing to galvanise opinion and motivate voters. And the cynical might be forgiven for thinking that Chancellor George Osborne’s recent sweetener of potentially £500M to unlock vital brownfield sites across the regions is simply that.  

Add to this the impending multi-million pound decisions by government to allocate the Growth Deal Fund for 2015 and European Structural and Investment Funds for 2014 to 2020 across the Local Enterprise Partnerships to support their Strategic Economic Plans and lever in vital private sector cash.

So on the face of it, the next few years are set for a potential bonanza of opportunity across the regions as we wrestle with the challenge of rebooting and redefining our urban landscape fit for and ready to drive and take advantage of the predicted economic growth.

But given that we are in the run up to the Election it is unlikely to be a straightforward process. As the cynics will concur, at this point in the political cycle the small print matters. 

Yet whatever happens in May next year, what is certain is that across the infrastructure spectrum partnerships between the public and private sector will be critical. This latest announcements to stimulate housing development sets a framework which we would all do well to embrace and exploit.

Antony Oliver is the editor of Infrastructure Intelligence