The Federation of Master Builders has warned mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan’s targets for affordable housing could have an impact on SMEs…
With the London mayoral elections on the horizon later this week, the candidates have been setting out their stall for voters.
However, the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) has issued a warning that candidate Sadiq Khan’s focus on construction skills, while welcomed, risks being overshadowed by an unrealistic affordable housing policy.
Chief Executive of the FMB Brian Berry said: “Khan is right to link the housing crisis with the construction skills crisis.
“The growing shortage of talented tradespeople is widely recognised as one of the greatest barriers to house building and no amount of funding or target setting will work if the talent isn’t there to actually get the homes built.”
Last week, the FMB published their latest State of Trade Survey for the first quarter of this year. It revealed salaries for small building firms are rising as a result of the skills shortage. The data revealed that construction bosses expect to see salaries increase sharply over the next six months, due to the continuing skills shortage.
“Our latest State of Trade Survey underlined the persistent recruitment challenge firms face, with more than half of SMEs struggling to recruit bricklayers over the past year, and shortages remaining acute in many other vital trades.
Berry continued: “Bold, innovative ideas to plug the skills gap are therefore desperately needed, which Khan seems to recognise.
“The creation of a ‘construction academy scheme’, developed in tandem with the house building industry, is a creative solution that could put employers at the heart of skills policy in the capital.
“Moreover, a specially created skills taskforce that works with business on addressing key skills shortages has the potential to be a productive platform for responsive and collaborative decision-making. Given that construction SMEs train two-thirds of all apprentices in our sector, we hope that such a platform would give proper consideration to the contributions of smaller firms.
“However, Khan’s 50 per cent affordable housing target is entirely unworkable – as has been observed by others that, 50 per cent of nothing is nothing, and this is a particularly pertinent issue for small developers.
“We urge the Labour candidate to introduce a small site exemption, similar to that which Central Government is bringing forward in its Housing and Planning Bill.
“This recognises that placing unrealistic affordable housing demands on small sites will leave thousands of projects across the city unviable and hugely increase the barriers to growth of smaller developers.
“Khan’s “Homes for Londoners” policy, which envisages the house building sector working with City Hall to address the housing crisis, shows he is open to working directly with our industry. We hope that Khan stays true to this and takes SMEs concerns on-board.”
The mayoral elections are set to take place on 5 May.