By Isle of Wight Observer
Politicians love nice round figures, and Labour’s promise to build 1 1/2 million new homes in five years is comical. In the UK from April to June this year, just 23,000 new homes were started, two-thirds fewer than a year ago. New planning applications fell too. ‘Investment’ by housing associations went off a cliff. New starts are the lowest for 30 years – 63 per cent down.
Labour seem as bad as the Tories when it comes to porkies. Everyone seems agreed that Keir Starmer is a freeloader. He’s got off to a terrible start, but – lucky him – the Conservatives are still embarrassing themselves. Leadership candidate, James Cleverly, urged the membership to ‘be normal’ at conference, but that radical idea fell on deaf ears, so who knows what’s next?
Let’s do the maths on housing. Without bank holidays, Labour had just 1,826 days of construction work to get 1 1/2 million homes built, and 100 have already gone. Ignoring bad weather, they’d need to build a new home every 2 1/2 minutes, and even the Chinese can’t do that.
I have a real love-hate relationship with builders. They’re usually as elusive as the scarlet pimpernel, and their estimating skills are preposterous. That said, when they do turn up, their work is very physical. Can you imagine putting a shovel through mud and clay time and again? It’s tougher than you think, and they can’t always use a digger. Bricklaying and roofing are strenuous jobs, and bricks and slates need to get to where they’re needed – up ladders onto scaffolding. These heroes don’t only work in warm weather with their shirts off – they need to graft in the wind and rain too.
I’ve seen 25-year-old carpenters happily throw lengths of 4×2 around, but who’d want to be up on a roof setting out trusses aged 50 or 60, when it’s 5 degrees outside? I boarded a loft recently, and that was hard graft. Plasterboard too needs humping before you screw it to the ceiling and walls. Mixing and applying bags of plaster is skilled work. Again, it’s fairly do-able at 30, but hurts like hell in the long term. My excellent plumber, Adrian, does a lot of laying down on the job. How he works in tiny, confined spaces is a mystery. Fixing fiddly fittings while hanging upside down with no clear line of sight is a peculiar skill. Watching his arms repeatedly disappear under my bathroom floorboards, or inside various cavities, reminds me of watching James Herriot, on TV, placing his whole arm inside a cow during a difficult labour! I’ve always been useless relying on feel alone; I prefer to see what I’m doing.
In 2021 the price of building materials rose by 25 per cent, the year after that another 15 per cent, some stuff increased by more. The estimated cost of building even a modest new home is now around £150,000 and you need land to put it on. You also need infrastructure, roads and paths, as well as sewer, water and power connections. The interest on £150,000 is currently around £1,000 monthly, which means there’s no such thing as what they laughably call ‘affordable housing.’
Housing minister, Angela Rayner, may have lived in many houses, but I’ll wager she hasn’t spent much time on building sites or consulting with the industry. There are 65,280 households currently living in ‘temporary accommodation’, and that’s costing us all £1 billion annually. I’m prepared to bet my own house that Labour won’t build anything like 1 1/2 million new homes in five years. Aside from the problems I’ve outlined, there just isn’t enough skilled labour available.
Are they secretly smuggling men over on boats from Calais and training them up at camps in Kent? If not that, perhaps they plan to entice European workers back again. Either idea gives the hapless Tories some hope.