Q&A

With a prime minister who has put housing at the heart of government policy and an Office of Fair Trading investigation in progress, Home Builders Federation executive chairman Stewart Baseley and his members are the focus of attention.

What do you make of Gordon Brown’s announcement to increase housebuilding?

In overview terms we support increasing volumes. We were pretty much a lone voice in 2003 when we produced our publication Building a Crisis about the undersupply of homes. Now there’s a consensus.

Can the industry deliver?

Yes, but we need two things. First, we need to get more land identified for housing. Between 1997 and 2003 the amount of land coming through decreased by 7% and the more recent increase in housing output has been entirely due to driving up densities from 25 units to the hectare to 40. You can only play the density card once – we can’t go on increasing it.

Secondly, we have to get the planning system working faster.

How do you feel about the possible shelving of the planning gain supplement ?

It is good in principle because we think it is fundamentally flawed, but it depends on what could replace it. It doesn’t matter what you call it, this is about tax, taking money from land for infrastructure. I have no problem in principle with that but the question is how much? The level of take being extracted from sites has reached record levels and the PGS was designed to extract extra. I think the level of take is now a barrier. What is starting to happen is that landowners are not selling land – because they don’t have to – while some sites are becoming more valuable with their current or some other use than they would be for residential.

The OFT has announced it is investigating housebuilding. What's your view on that?

It came as a surprise and something of a disappointment. The industry has done a lot to improve – it has responded to Barker’s first report, the customer satisfaction survey is in place, we have a code of conduct. Customer satisfaction is ingrained in a way it wasn’t five years ago. I was surprised and confused at the OFT's decision to look at land and planning. But as an industry we have nothing to fear from the process.