BPF blog post reflects on state of nation’s housing policies

Article summary

The British Property Federation (BPF) has published a blog post by its Director of Policy (Real Estate), Ian Fletcher, on the state of the nation’s housing policies. He claims that a successful housing policy relies on three factors of production—land, labour and capital. According to Fletcher, capital is the most neglected of these factors in housing policy, highlighting that, post global economic slowdown, ‘banks are far more constrained by liquidity and solvency rules’ and various policies such as rent caps and freezes do not help attract capital to housing. Construction labour is constrained by significant demographic changes, and the blog post questions whether the range of initiatives intended to attract workers into the construction sector will manage to recruit the new inflow of labour before the expected outflow. Finally, Fletcher asks whether the attention given to land and planning is beneficial, as he says there is a ‘schism that cuts across political parties...