In a series of interviews following the Chancellors Spring Statement, Business Link catches up with Stuart Law, the CEO and co-founder of Assetz Capital, for his response to the measures announced.
“While we welcome the Chancellor’s interventions to support households with the increasing cost of living, including decreasing fuel duty, removing VAT on measures to make homes more energy efficient and increasing the National Insurance threshold later this year, the ONS has announced that house prices grew nearly 10% over the year to January 2022.
With the Bank of England raising rates again to combat inflation, the cost of housing – by far people’s biggest monthly outgoing – is getting more expensive at the worst possible time.
We face an immediate crisis with the cost of energy, we also need to address longer-standing structural, economic and policy issues that are supporting ongoing house price growth. Price growth isn’t just about a knee-jerk response to the pandemic or lingering issues to do with post-Brexit trade, although of course both continue to impact the market.
How we want to live is fundamentally supporting high demand, while an onerous planning system, labour and materials shortages and high land prices continue to hamper construction output. We urgently need to see the content of the much-delayed Planning Bill to understand how this might unlock development by bringing down build costs, and as a result temper price growth to make housing more affordable for all.
Ultimately, balancing supply and demand is the only sustainable way to ensure reasonable levels of house price growth and accessibility to housing for people of all incomes. We are determined to play our part in building a fairer housing market, which is why we’ve recently announced a major extension to our partnership with Aros Kapital to bring £1 billion of funding into the UK. Much of this will be targeted at supporting SME housebuilders. We need a market that better supports SME housebuilders and unlocks development, and as a result lowers the cost of housing, improving access to quality living accommodation for all, but especially those that need additional support; first time buyers, people on low incomes, people fleeing abuse, coping with addiction or living with mental or physical disabilities.
We need a policy focus on these issues, as well as inflation and the cost of energy, if we truly want to make a substantial impact in tackling the cost of living crisis.”
