The Welsh Government’s announcement that £30m will be pumped into the Wales Property Development Fund to improve access to finance for small Welsh construction firms will help to increase house building, according to the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) Cymru.
Ifan Glyn, director of FMB Cymru, said: “The Welsh Government’s announcement today of £30m is welcome and will assist SME builders that want to build new homes but are struggling to access affordable finance. Nearly ten years on from the financial crisis, small housebuilders are still facing serious problems in accessing the finance they need to build new homes. Recent research from the FMB shows that the lending conditions for SME developers were down slightly from 2016, the first fall in this measure since 2013. More than half of small housebuilders over the border in England say accessing finance is a major barrier to their ability to build more homes and we know that this issue is also constraining output for Welsh builders.”
Glyn concluded: “It’s good news that the Welsh Government is doing more to assist SMEs in entering, or re-entering, the housebuilding market. This was a key plan of the Welsh Government’s Economic Strategy, published earlier this week, and it’s right that enabling smaller firms to build more homes has edged up the priority list. Indeed, FMB Cymru recently signed a pact with Welsh Government to address ways in which Government and industry can work closer together to deliver the additional homes that we desperately need.”
