Brown's speech is 'lacking ambition'

The RICS has attacked today’s pre-budget announcement from Gordon Brown. It called on the government to do more to draft foreign skilled workers into the UK. Senior economist at the RICS David Stubbs said the chancellor’s report “lacked ambition”.

The RICS said it welcomed Brown’s commitment to invest heavily in education but said that mechanisms to bring in foreign skills must improved. Brian Berry, RICS head of public policy, said: “Until the cogs of the academic system can produce the volume of skilled workers required, steps to encourage cross professional working and mechanisms to tap into international labour resources must be considered, if the government's infrastructure investment ambitions are to be realised.” The RICS recently launched a campaign to relax work permit rules for quantity surveyors.

Stubbs meanwhile criticised the government’s housebuilding plans, which he said were too conservative. “The government repeated its target of raising housebuilding to 200,000 homes per year from 165,000 in the year to September. This is still short of the projected increase in English households of 209,00 per year, every year until 2026. It does nothing to address the backlog of housing demand that has been built up due to persistent undersupply in the past 15 years.”

He added that announcements of 29 "New Growth Points" were “little more than a derisory gesture”. The plan willl raise housebuilding by only around an extra 2,500 homes per year in the designated areas up to 2016, the RICS claimed.

The RICS did, however, welcome the pre-budget decision to make it easier for newly established companies to join the REIT regime. A one year period has been set out to adjust to the REIT company rules, which stipulate that 75% of their business by assets and income, consists of property rental activity. A further clarification is that conversion tax will now be levied at the end of the year, based on 2% of the gross market value of a company's investment properties. Oliver Gilmartin, RICS economist, said: “These two measures combined should ensure a more dynamic start to the market in early 2007.”