Government support for housing and construction industry

Government Support for the Construction and Housing Industry 

In the last budget, the Government announced an additional £600 million in funding support for the construction and house building industry. Broken down, the funding includes £400 million to help re-start stalled housing developments and a further £100 million for local authorities to pay for social housing. The Government said that these measures would help deliver an extra 10,000 homes.

The extra funding was welcomed by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors who said that the moves would create a vibrant housing market, while the Home Builders Federation said it was delighted with the new Government support. The Budget also saw the Chancellor announce a 1 per cent stamp duty holiday on homes worth up to £175,000.

The Government has also brought forward short-term spending during the downturn to stimulate housing development as well as boost the capacity of the house building industry in the long-term. This will drive a housing supply target of 240,000 new homes every year by 2016. Housing Minister John Healey has also brought forward a new package of measures designed to help the construction industry during these difficult times.

Developers will be given more time to start building and further flexibility to adapt plans, which will also enable more greener buildings and houses to be built. The system of house building is also being simplified under new measures, making it easier for developers to apply for planning permission in the first place.

Over the next 2 years, this Labour government is bringing forward £1.5 billion of housing spending that will protect jobs in the industry, whilst also delivering more affordable homes and urgent repairs for thousands of families sooner.

All of this investment and funding is in sharp contrast to Conservative proposals. Just like in the recession of the early 1990s, the Tories plan to do nothing. In the last recession, the Tories stood by while thousands of families had their homes repossessed.  

In 1997, the Labour Government inherited a £19 billion backlog of housing repairs, and over 2 million homes in the social sector failed to meet a decent standard. In addition, capital spending was on housing had been cut in half and house building was at its lowest level for 70 years.

Here in Great Yarmouth, redevelopment funding grants and Government support has provided plenty of work for the local construction industry. The new outer harbour will revitalise the town, and many areas are being improved.

The Townscape project is one example of local investment and work for the construction industry. Begun in 2002, £4.6 million of funding has been spent on 87 projects in the urban conservation area, focusing on restoring and developing historic sites and buildings, including reducing the number of buildings at risk in the area from 75 to 10. £2million of funding was provided from the Heritage Lottery Fund, with the remainder provided by the East of England Development Agency, Objective 2 and Great Yarmouth Borough Council.

The new redevelopment work at St George's Chapel and King's Street will breathe new life into those areas. In what is a rare event, a second maximum Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £2 million was awarded for work on this area, after personal intervention by Tony Wright MP, and also due to the professionalism that the Townscape project was carried out with. With an aim to repair the chapel and reinvent it as an arts and cultural centre, as well as repairing 30 additional buildings along King's Street this project provided many highly skilled jobs for the construction industry.

Both of these projects have meant that training was needed for the advanced skills needed to repair historic buildings, due to the shortage of these skills at a national level. 64 training courses culminating in 470 training hours were wet up which will leave Great Yarmouth's construction industry even better skilled than before. In total for the two projects, 13,801 square metres of vacant floor space will be brought back into use.

The Government regional housing fund has also provided £5.3 million in SHIP/SHARP funding for housing across the whole of Great Yarmouth. The largest amount, £3.4 million, is destined for the Southtown Housing Improvement Project (SHIP), with another £1.9million to extend the improvements made through Secondary Holiday Area Regeneration Project (SHARP) which saw a rundown area just behind the seafront given new vitality.

The SHIP money is also aimed at vulnerable households in the private sector, funding basic house repairs, and bringing houses up to a decent standard providing modern facilities such as plumbing, kitchens, heating and insulation. 

Redevelopment and new projects are going on in Great Yarmouth all the time and this shows that the Government is committed both at local and national levels to ensure that investment is still forthcoming in these challenging economic circumstances. It is strong investment from this Government, as opposed to the do nothing policies of the Conservative government in the last recession, that will ensure that Britain emerges stronger from these difficult times.

The last recession of the early 1990s was not as severe as the one currently being experienced, but it just goes to show the contrast of Labour and the Conservatives where you saw 500,000 job losses in the construction industry in the last recession, and new projects and redevelopment initiatives from Labour keeping the industry vibrant and strong in this recession.