Kate's impossible dream

Tell me, what do you builders have to say about the Barker Report? It gives you a bit of a slamming. "The need to improve standards applies right across the industry: of the nine companies that performed worse than the industry average on this indicator, four – Persimmon, Barratt, Wilson Connolly and Westbury – were among the top 10 housebuilders in 2002." Are you going to let her get away with that?

Kate Barker's 160-page report, addressed to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, is all about reviewing housing supply. She wants to be a tap-dancer … turn the tap on and get houses, turn it off and get none. She was brought up in a car factory. She really can't fathom why homes can't come off a production line to suit economic convenience. The Fat Controller shouts "more Mondeos, more Jags and the line speeds up.

Barker bleats "Why don't housebuilders build more in times of greater demand?" Her doctorate didn't include being a bricky. Pity, really. Instead, she became chief economic adviser to the CBI then chief European economist at Ford. It seems to have come as a shock to her that builders do not control the market; they are its victims. Damn it, a builder cannot decide on Friday to build more houses on Monday. He is in the hands of landowners, planners, five-year policymakers and, worst of all, in the hands of people who have to be consulted, have their say, have to be persuaded.

Anyway, Kate has given Gordon and Tony some answers to the volatile housing market. Some of them sound good. She wants the usual five-year plan, the usual allocation of land, the usual fretting about infrastructure, but then she wants to build look-out towers. They will be staffed by people who will be able to spot things like acute housing shortages before they happen, whereupon the local authority will put a contingency plan into action and Persimmon will start building more homes in a hurry. Got it?

Had she stopped there she would have got a round of applause. Imagine having a contingency plan that got rid of all the tedious preamble to doing the actual building of houses. Imagine saying "more" to builders on Friday and getting more on Monday.

Then she ruined it all by slamming the builders. She said you folk weren't up to it. You keep getting into disputes with your customers. And Barker believes your customers. These customers are also called consumers. Governments tremble before consumers. They vote at elections. She believes the National Consumer Satisfaction Survey, which indicates, year-on-year, that half of your customers, sorry consumers, wouldn't recommend you as their housebuilder.

Barker bleats ‘Why don’t housebuilders build more in times of greater demand?’ Her doctorate didn’t include being a bricky. Pity, really

The fact is that customers don't understand that traditional and ordinary piece of paper called a "snagging list". If you build using carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers and the other chaps doing work on site, that work will be snagged. Not only that, but iffy work will not show up until Mr and Mrs Consumer has moved in. And then when you, Mr Builder, send the lads around to mend the loose lock on the back door, well now Mr and Mrs Consumer get fed up.

And by the fifth visit from Fred with his bum peeping out of his jeans, she is very fed up. It doesn't take much for Mr and Mrs to become spiteful. Then they don't just want to see the back of Fred, they want compensation for being messed around. Rarely are they entitled to compensation for spite. So they complain to MORI. Barker is saying to you builders that your blokes aren't trained, aren't apprenticed. It's not that at all. The plain fact is that even if we had a million more apprentices, defects would still be the norm and snagging ordinary.