What is the biggest problem in the housing industry in the UK?

In the 00s the UK was one of the housing leaders in Europe. We were leading the way in terms of things like innovation and working towards net zero. However, things have broken in the last 15 years. Now we have a massive problem. We want to have a look at the cause today.

Massive companies

The issue in the UK is the housing industry is dominated by a handful of massive developers. They are responsible for building the vast majority of homes here. Having a small number of companies responsible for such an important industry causes some major problems. Firstly, the developers mainly focus on profit. That can result in low quality homes and a failure to innovate. Often they stick with a small number of home designs because they are quicker and cheaper to produce. Another problem is it means the industry is more vulnerable to shocks. When there are economic troubles like we've seen in the past few years, it means housebuilding can come to a halt. We've seen this with things like residential architecture. There is very little resiliency and it takes longer for the big developers to respond.

A better way

As we said above, there was a time when we were a leader in housebuilding. Today we are behind countries like Germany and Switzerland. They have taken up the mantle of leaders by ensuring they have thousands of medium-size developers instead of a handful of massive companies. It puts the emphasis on innovation and quality. At the same time, it means there is more protection against economic shocks.

Skills

There has also been a decline in housebuilding skills. The major cause of this was Brexit. Before leaving the EU, we could easily attract skilful people from across Europe. However, it is now much harder for EU Nationals to work in the UK. Many chose to leave and far fewer come here now. The issue is twofold. We've lost the skilful workers and seen a massive drop in labour numbers. More importantly, it has laid bare the fact that the skills of the UK workforce are not keeping pace with modern demands. Sadly that translates to new builds that are more likely to have various defects.