Birketts’ Residential Development Team hosts housing industry thought leadership dinner with guest speaker, Dame Kate Barker

• Dame Kate Barker hosts discussion exploring the challenges identified in the 2004 “Review of UK Housing Supply” Report and the HBF’s 20-year review, ‘Beyond Barker’
• Guests from the housebuilding industry including regional and national developers and registered providers.
• Discussion outlined the main challenges including lack of planning resource, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient funding both from the Government and private investment.
• Solutions need to include planning reforms allowing for zonal and regional planning, technological advancements in construction with wider use of Modern Methods of Construction, forward investment in infrastructure and utility provision.

Birketts’ Residential Development Team recently hosted a Thought Leadership Dinner featuring Dame Kate Barker as the keynote speaker. The event, attended by prominent developers and housing industry representatives, was opened by Birketts’ Chief Executive, Jonathan Agar. The focus was on the findings of the 2004 ‘Barker Review of UK Housing Supply’ and the 2024 HBF-commissioned ‘Beyond Barker’ report.

Steven Kay, Joint Head of the Residential Development Team, chaired the discussions, facilitating a dive into the persistent issues hindering housing supply and delivery.

Dame Kate Barker began by revisiting the original Barker Report, which proposed 36 recommendations to boost housing supply, including setting targets, land allocation, planning reforms, and community infrastructure funds.

The dialogue among developers was robust, addressing ongoing supply and delivery challenges that have persisted for two decades since the original report. There was a consensus that the housing market is in crisis, exacerbated by decades of instability. Key performance indicators such as ‘rent vs disposable income’ and ‘mortgage vs disposable income’, along with the age of first-time buyers and the number of young people living at home, were discussed as metrics to gauge the problem’s extent and measure success.

The Government’s target to deliver 1.5 million new homes over the next five years, with an emphasis on social housing, was a focal point. The urgent need for more social rent, build-to-rent, and retirement living options was underscored, especially given the high levels of temporary accommodation.

Participants agreed that current market challenges are intensified by underinvestment in infrastructure and rising construction costs, which affect the viability of affordable housing without additional funding. Even with nil land values, the need for private housing to cross-subsidise affordable housing delivery remains critical, particularly with the added pressures of retrofit and fire safety demands. Low rents deter institutional investment, necessitating government incentives. Infrastructure funding must be prioritized to attract private investment and achieve bulk delivery. Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) were also discussed as a potential long-term solution, though technological challenges in productivity and quality persist.

Discussion took place on progress since the 2004 Barker Review. Marking the 20-year anniversary of the original Barker Review, the HBF commissioned “Beyond Barker” to assess progress made in implementing Barker’s recommendations and to evaluate the current state of the housing market in England. The report called for renewed efforts to increase housing supply, improve affordability, and address the needs of lower-income households. There is a real need to align the planned delivery of both infrastructure and housing. Inevitably, planning departments require investment to maximise resources, but the Government will need to heavily invest across all areas of the sector. Attendees questioned how realistic the Government targets are, to deliver 300,000 homes a year. Current delivery levels are falling far below those aspirations. With the industry facing greater challenges in terms of rising construction costs, lack of skilled workforce and increasing regulation, it seems unlikely that the overall 1.5m target in five years could be met, but 300,000 per year within five years might be achievable. As Dame Kate Barker warns in her foreword to ‘Beyond Barker’, ‘the prospect of 300,000 new homes a year in England seems as far off today as it did in 2004’.

Following a call for planning reforms to allow zonal and regional planning, technological advancements in construction, and forward investment in infrastructure and utility provision to address these enduring challenges, the event concluded with a return to regional planning favoured over the localism approach to remove uncertainty, along with the re-introduction of mandatory targets. However, these targets need flexibility to adapt to evolving local market needs and preserve the length of planning permissions to allow sufficient time for implementation. The lack of planning resources to handle reserved matters applications and condition discharges continues to impact the speed of delivery, compounded by a shortage of skilled construction workers.