Housebuilder backs calls for ‘targeted support’

The managing director of Bromsgrove-based Horgan Homes says that the UK’s construction sector is facing ‘pressure like never before’ – and has called for urgent reform to support small and medium‑sized builders.

Sophie Horgan highlighted soaring material costs, squeezed margins and a planning system that ‘favours scale over local builders’ as combined factors in a viability crisis that is shutting down high‑quality regional development across the country.

There are now around 2,000 to 2,500 SME housebuilders in England, compared with around 12,000 in the late 1980s, a fall of roughly 80% over four decades.

Findings in a report by the Home Builders Federation, released last month, showed a sharp deterioration in confidence among small and medium-sized home builders, with expectations for land purchasing, housing starts and housing market conditions all declining sharply over the past year.

“SME builders once delivered a huge share of this country’s homes, but today that share has collapsed,” she said.

“Small construction firms continue to go bust at huge rates in what is a shameful waste of talent, experience and knowledge.

“I’m fed up of going to London and hearing developers talk up regeneration projects as if everything is hunky‑dory, because I know that the reality on the ground is far different. This is not doom‑mongering – it is a call to be realistic.”

Sophie told guests at the Cheltenham and Gloucester Women in Property event that urgent action was needed both from government and within the construction industry to solve the crisis, and called on the government to recognise SME builders as a strategic national asset who delivered homes which people wanted.

The government has made support for SME housebuilders a central part of its housing strategy, recognising that smaller builders are essential if it is to meet its target of delivering 1.5 million homes – shifting focus away from volume house builders somewhat.

Alongside reforms designed to speed up planning decisions due to be introduced as part of the new NPPF, a ‘medium site’ category will be created for schemes of between 10 and 49 homes, which the government says will make rules and costs faced by SME builders “more proportionate”.

But Horgan has called for more to be done to prevent smaller firms going to wall.

“It’s companies like mine, the SME builders who have been the backbone of UK construction, who are feeling it the most,” she added.

“That deserves targeted support and it needs fair access to land, sensible planning fees and a procurement system that doesn’t favour scale over quality.

“We also need planning that understands scale. A 20‑home site is not a 2,000‑home site so the system must be proportionate. We need clear, enforceable timeframes for decisions and a route to gaining permission that doesn’t wrap small developers in red tape.

“If the system treats every site the same, then the small, local, high‑quality schemes that give communities character will disappear.”