Christopher Pincher Speaks on Housing Crisis in House of Commons

Tamworth’s MP, Christopher Pincher, delivered a speech in the House of Commons last week addressing the extent of the housing challenge in the West Midlands, and the need to work towards a workable solution.

Mr Pincher suggested that by increasing the amount of small to medium enterprises in the development supply chain, construction and development can be increased with greater efficiency.

Mr Pincher said, “88,000 new houses are needed in the west midlands. One of the challenges – even though we have reformed planning, introduced Help to Buy, and are selling public land to private development – is the number of small and medium-sized enterprises in the development supply chain”

Pincher called on the Government to encourage big developers, such as Bovis, Persimmon and Redrow, to franchise some of their land bank to smaller developers. He suggested this would de-risk the big developers, because they would not have to take the risk of building the houses, and help smaller developers, because the planning activity would have been undertaken at minimum cost. He suggested this would ensure more SMEs into the supply chain and help us build “homes for the future in the midlands and beyond.”

Afterwards he said, “We also need a different mix of buildings.  I think we need more bungalows mixed into new housing developments so people can downsize in retirement but still stay at the heart of local communities.  That also means more larger homes can come onto the market – if older single people have nowhere to downsize to then all they can do is stay living in a home too big for them.”