Back small house builders to improve the design of new homes, says FMB

Removing barriers to small house builders will deliver better quality homes and happier people, according to the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) in response to a national design audit conducted by UCL for CPRE, the countryside charity, and the Place Alliance, published today (21 January).

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB, said:

“Today’s report shows the impacts of thirty years of market consolidation, which has squeezed out the small builder. SME house builders have to compete on quality rather than volume, so it is hardly surprising that a broken housing market dominated by a handful of major developers is failing to deliver what homeowners want and need.”

Berry concluded:

“To get SME builders back into the housing market we need to tackle the barriers of land supply, access to finance and a simpler planning system. Greater diversity in our housing market will not only help deliver better quality homes, but happier people as recent FMB research shows that homeowners are twice as likely to be ‘very satisfied’ with the quality of their new build home if it is built by a small builder than one of the top 20 firms.”

Kindly shared by Federation of Master Builders (FMB)