The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) has claimed that it will be a good few months until house building gets back on track.
The director of external affairs at the organisation, Brian Berry, said that the impact of government moves to stimulate house building will not be seen until the second half of the year. He added that this improvement will only be seen if the government follows through on its plans outlined last year. He stated, “We are not very optimistic – and that depends on the government sticking to the original proposals.”
Referring to the National Planning Policy Framework Mr Berry added, “With planning proposals, it is not going to be until March when the government is going to respond initially and even if it responds positively it will still take months to actually feed through into the economy.”
Mr Berry also spoke about the general condition of the housing market, adding that it was still tough for first time buyers to get onto the housing ladder and that large deposits are still needed to gain many mortgages.