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HCA confident of targets despite Brexit vote
The Homes and Communities Agency is confident that it will meet its housebuilding targets this year despite last week’s Brexit vote, according to its executive director in the North West.
Deborah McLaughlin told delegates at Housing 2016 that the agency had hit its deliver targets every year to date and “I hope that this year will be no exception”.
Ms McLaughlin said that she’d had conversations with several house builders since the Brexit vote and that “they have said it is business as usual”.
“We are going to crack on with what we have got to deliver,” she stated. “I think as things stabilise I don’t think we should be too worried about that.”
She added that the underlying demand for homeownership would also not change.
“Regardless of the current state of house builders and developers people have always had aspirations for homeownership,” she stated. “Even through the recession people still had that aspiration.”
But Ms McLaughlin admitted that Brexit was “unknown territory” and that she was “not going to predict what is going to happen”.
“None of us actually know,” she added.
Amy Nettleton, chair of the National Homeownership Group, warned against “hysteria” about the impact of the Brexit vote. She said that she thought, if anything, it would increase the demand for shared ownership.
