"You see, as well as suffering from a housing shortage, the market is also struggling with a skills shortage."
Anyone operating within it will tell you. For too long we’ve allowed the same old problems to continue - not enough homes being build, prices rising beyond the reach of buyers, not enough support for first time buyers - and now we’ve reached breaking point. Now people are taking notice, but is it enough?
We’ve had the government White Paper which, according to the general consensus, was rather weak. We’ve have MPs speaking out about the need for more housing. We’ve had the housing minister and the communities secretary vowing to ‘look at ways’ to solve the crisis. But we’ve had very little in the way of action. And there is a reason for that.
You see, as well as suffering from a housing shortage, the market is also struggling with a skills shortage. There are simply not enough people operating within this market to give it the manpower needed to get out of this mess.
All areas of the housing industry are struggling to find new staff whether that be simply because the right people aren’t out there (something the mortgage market has been battling with for many years) or that the people are there but the funding needed to recruit them isn’t.
Indeed, as one article I read in the financial press recently pointed out, the government is passing much of the responsibility for solving this crisis to local councils. Yet these councils have been hit with significant cuts of late. One wonders how many people they actually have working in their housing departments now?
This can’t escalate into a game of passing the buck. We need a cohesive approach and we need action. Let’s hope the Election and the start of a new Parliament, whether that be under May, Corbyn or Farron, galvanises the industry and gets results.
