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SME home builders

Our work  /  Policy  /  SME home builders
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Often operating in more rural locations or smaller towns, small and medium home builders positively contribute to  community benefit in their local area, supporting jobs and apprenticeships jobs as well as playing an essential role in housing delivery.

However, ongoing issues with planning and constraints on bank lending continue to present major problems for this group, not only affecting the individual businesses concerned but also seriously impacting overall industry ability to increase housing output.

The scale of the problem is reflected in the fact that, despite the strong demand for housing that exists, smaller builders are delivering some 2000 fewer homes per annum than before 2008. 

Encouraging more into the market is crucial, not just in terms of volume but particularly in relation to increasing diversity of product, creating local employment opportunities and sustaining more rural communities.

Click here to read our report on Small Scale Home Builders: Increasing Supply which identifies solutions and prioritises the action required to support and grow these businesses.

The report comes as HFS begins tracking quarterly housing completions for 2019 against those of last year.  With 15 per cent growth achieved in 2018 compared to the previous year, maintaining such levels of improvement would see a return to the pre-recession build rate average of 25,000 new homes per annum that HFS believes Scotland requires within the next two years. However, this can only 

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