NHBC submission to the Senedd
Local Government and Housing Committee: Priorities for the
Committee
About NHBC
·
NHBC is the leading warranty and insurance provider
for new homes in the UK. Our core purpose is to give homeowners
confidence in the construction quality of new homes. NHBC sets
standards for our warranty and conducts inspections
onsite.
·
NHBC's ten-year Buildmark warranty covers c70-80% of
new homes built in the UK, currently protecting around 1.5 million
homes.
·
NHBC is a non-profit distributing organisation, with
no shareholders, authorised by the PRA and regulated by the PRA and
the FCA.
·
NHBC does not build or sell homes; it is not a
regulator and does not represent any part of the industry.
Individual builders are ultimately responsible for the quality of
the homes they build and sell to consumers.
·
NHBC also provides guidance and training to
industry. NHBC delivers approximately 13,500 delegate days of
training to the house-building industry per year, as well as
offering builders other training opportunities, such as
apprenticeships.
·
The NHBC Foundation regularly produces high quality
research to help the industry and policy makers meet the challenges
of the day, and practical guidance to help house buildersdeliver high quality new homes.
Executive Summary
NHBC would suggest the following areas should be
priorities for the Committee in the next year, as Wales looks to
overcome housing sector challenges as part of its recovery from the
pandemic:
- Climate Change and Net Zero - it will be important to examine the Welsh
Government’s plans to deliver net zero by 2050 in the housing
sector.
- Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) -
the use of MMC systems has the potential to increase
productivity and supply but will need to focus on construction
quality.
- Skills – skills shortages and skills gaps for future roles in
housing need to be addressed through high quality training tailored
to housebuilders’ needs.
NHBC have unique insight, data and research on these
topics, and the housing market more broadly which we would be happy
to share with the Committee for its future work programme. For more
information on NHBC or our response, please contact NHBC’s
Head of Corporate Affairs, Lewis Sidnick
Climate Change and Net Zero
-
Earlier this year, the Senedd approved a net zero
target for 2050, and it will be important to examine the Welsh
Government’s plans to deliver this in the housing
sector.
-
NHBC supports the ambition for net zero homes, but we
are also firmly focused on ensuring the movement towards net zero
does not compromise build quality.
-
NHBC’s core purpose is to provide confidence in
the construction quality of new homes, which is why we became a
member of the Future Homes Task Force to ensure quality is a top
priority in this policy area.
-
The Welsh Government has announced plans to double
its spending on social housing for rent, spending £250m in
2021-22, as part of its plans to deliver 20,000 new low carbon
homes during the current term.
-
The Government has promised that these homes will be
‘built to bold new quality and environmental standards with
the aim for some of the stock to go beyond net zero and produce
more energy than they use’.
-
This will be an important agenda for the committee to
follow and scrutinise, especially in relation to build quality. The
NHBC Foundation recently produced two reports on the future of home
heating and biodiversity in new housing developments.[1]
-
The Foundation intends to do more research into this
area in the months ahead which we would be happy to share with the
Committee.
Modern Methods of Construction
-
The Welsh Government has set out its intention to
increase the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) in
housing.
-
The Welsh Government’s Re-imagining social
house building in Wales - A Modern Methods of Construction Strategy
for Social Housing Implementation plan (February 2021) sets out
an intention to ‘require all our social housing funded
schemes to embrace and implement MMC principles’.
-
While the use of MMC systems
has the potential to increase the scale and pace of
housebuilding, poorly executed innovation can be a major risk
as any potential defect in an MMC system at a factory level could
be multiplied across potentially thousands of homes.
-
It is therefore important that the Welsh
Government’s objectives on MMC are focused on delivering high
quality homes.
-
NHBC has always supported innovation in
housebuilding, working with industry to help them develop new
methods of construction to a high quality standard.
-
As part of NHBC’s work on MMC, we have worked
closely with the Welsh Government to support it in its objectives
and help MMC systems used in housing to meet the same expected
standards as a traditional build home.
-
Last year, we launched NHBC Accepts, an end-to-end
service that enables high-quality MMC to be fast-tracked for
NHBC’s leading warranty, Buildmark.
-
NHBC Accepts helps to build confidence in MMC. When a
system has been accepted, builders, homeowners, lenders, and local
authorities can be reassured it can meet our standards.
-
We have currently accepted 28 MMC systems onto NHBC
Accepts and our ambitions are to continue to expand on this so that
more MMC can be used in housebuilding to increase housing supply
while retaining high construction quality.
-
We would be very happy to share our experiences
working with MMC manufacturers and builders with the committee if
that would be helpful.
Skills
-
Skills remain a longstanding issue for the housing
sector which the committee should explore further.
-
The Welsh Government’s commitment to reform
post-16 education and training is a step in the right direction,
but the already significant skills shortages in construction pose a
significant challenge to the sector and Government.
-
Research by the NHBC Foundation has found that
‘over-reliance on an ageing male workforce is pervasive in
house-building, particularly in site-based and management
roles’ and identified a range of solutions, including
tackling diversity issues, targeted recruitment, community outreach
and awareness raising.
-
The existing skills crisis will be compounded by
future skills gaps as the demand for installing and maintaining low
carbon technologies in homes increases. This could risk the
Government’s wider ambition to build 20,000 new low carbon
homes.
-
It is important that training and apprenticeships are
tailored to specific sector needs, rather than focused on
pan-construction activities. For example, bricklaying training
provided by many providers is generic and not focused on
housebuilders’ needs.
-
Traditional college term time and day release leads
to long programmes that struggle to retain apprentices through to
completion and do not meet the flexibility demands of
builders.
-
NHBC expertise and experience informs the industry,
and our training raises standards to help builders to produce
better quality homes.
-
NHBC delivers approximately 17,000 delegate days of
training to the house-building industry per year, as well as
offering builders other training opportunities, such as
apprenticeships.
-
The nature of cross-border working in the
house-building sector can create challenges to accessing
apprenticeship funding; for example, an apprentice might be
employed at sites in both England and Wales throughout their
apprenticeship, or work for an English company, but be based in
Wales.