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Guest blog: Self-build is essential to supporting the government's ambitious housebuilding targets

Chris Blewitt, Head of Mortgages at Darlington Building Society, explores the potential of the self-build housing market to amplify housebuilding rates, and what is needed to achieve this.

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This article was first published in Society Matters magazine

Chris Blewitt, Head of Mortgages, Darlington Building SocietyRachel Reeves MP highlighted the new government's plans to build 1.5 million homes in England over the course of this parliament in her inaugural speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As ever, the devil is in the detail, and Darlington Building Society fully supports the government’s  objective to ease the housing crisis.
 
Whilst there were certainly no sweeteners in the Autumn Statement for the residential mortgage market  we remain hopeful that Housing Minister, Matthew Pennycook MP’s enthusiasm towards self-build  provides a brighter future for self-builders. Pennycook has built on his initial enthusiasm for the  self-build sector in a recent letter to the Chair of Homes England. Doubling down on the party’s manifesto to “Get  Britain Building Again” he expressed an expectation of Homes England to “support the reform and diversification of the housing market.” More specifically, he requested “support the self and custom build  and community-led housing sectors.”
 
Amplify progress
 
The new build market in 2023 made for gloomy reading. In 2023, there was a decrease in new home  registrations—the process by which a developer registers their intent to build a new home—to 105,449,  compared to 189,009 in 20221.
 
However, the Right to Build register has over 50,000 signatories so far,  with just 7,000 plot opportunities available. The Planning and Infrastructure bill proposed in the King’s Speech could be a vehicle to  alleviate this issue and open the gates to more self-builders…and therefore more homes. We hope to see movement on this in early 2025.
 
We need housebuilding to be firing on all cylinders to reach the target set out by the Chancellor—50%  higher than the previous 200,000 homes per year target, which was never met. Self-build isn’t the  reserve of the wealthy, with sites such as Graven Hill in Oxfordshire perfectly demonstrating how  accessible and affordable self-build can be on a range of budgets, providing a diverse stock of homes. 
 
Support for self-builders - what does it look like?
 
Like any economic scale, supply and demand drives house prices up and down - and with it, affordability.
 
With 1 in 3 people considering building/commissioning their own home (NaCSBA) the scope to amplify housebuilding rates with self-build is huge. But support for individuals is needed.
 
By increasing its support for independent self-builders the government will clear the path for more to  follow suit, effectively creating a supplementary stream of housebuilding that is not reliant on large corporations and associated red tape delays.
 
In her inaugural speech, the Chancellor laid out plans to review green belt boundaries to prioritise the  1.2 million brownfield sites and newly coined “grey belt” land. This could go some way to providing self-builders with the much-needed land and permissions to build their dream home.
 
Every self-build journey starts with research. Darlington Building Society lends on self-build projects up and down the UK and is partnered with BuildLoan so that aspiring self-builders have access to  experts from pre-planning to unlocking their new front door.
 
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