Sophie Horgan, director of award-winning Horgan Homes and UK’s Best Small Housebuilder at the WhatHouse? Awards 2023, says the chancellor must choose between supporting the businesses that actually build homes or watching the sector collapse in this year’s Budget.
I’ll be honest – I’m frustrated. I’m watching an SME housebuilding industry that should be thriving slowly suffocating under the weight of policies designed to help everyone and everything, except the businesses actually delivering Britain’s homes.
The Chancellor’s pre-Budget speech last week acknowledged productivity challenges and promised “difficult choices” ahead.
But here’s my question: when will the government finally make the choice to back the SME sector that forms the backbone of this country?
We’re all feeling the strain – from public finances to households under pressure from cost-of-living increases. UK GDP rose just 0.3% in Q2 2025 and you only need to visit the shops to see how inflation is affecting ordinary people’s daily lives, alongside soaring energy costs.
The Budget needs to walk a fine line between stimulating growth, protecting living standards and restoring fiscal sustainability. But repeatedly taxing the SME sector isn’t the answer. If the government keeps hitting business owners, why would we continue to invest in the UK?
What I want to see are tax policies which encourage business investment. It’s basic economics, yet it seems lost on policymakers.
Housing policy is where the disconnect becomes most obvious. Statistically, we don’t have a housing crisis – we have a crisis with stamp duty.
Every time the government meddles with stamp duty rates, house prices fluctuate wildly. For once, can we just leave it alone? Stamp duty needs to be a level playing field.
A consistent housing market benefits everyone – boom and bust cycles help nobody.
But housing policy failures go much deeper. The sites that SME housebuilders like us bring forward add significant value, yet we’re treated as an afterthought. Local authorities should be incentivised to prioritise small and medium sites of up to 50 units. The delays and inconsistency we face at local authority level represent our biggest cost and cash flow risks.
The Chancellor talks about improving productivity, yet we’re drowning in bureaucracy. We need mandated planning decision timelines and digital platform rollouts for quicker, more transparent processes. When developers can’t predict timelines, we can’t plan our pipelines or provide investor confidence.
Some specific changes could make an immediate difference. Support for first-time buyers. They are our pipeline, and if they aren’t stepping onto the ladder the entire chain stagnates and housebuilding becomes unviable.
Reduce Section 106 and affordable housing obligations on small sites of 20 homes or fewer, scrap Biodiversity Net Gain requirements on small sites – it simply doesn’t work and makes developments unviable.
Government-backed development finance guarantees would help unlock smaller builders constrained by high interest costs. Corporation tax relief for investment in low-carbon building materials would encourage sustainable construction. I could go on.
But here’s what really frustrates me: private-public partnerships are always aimed at national housebuilders, not regional SMEs like us.
Yet we’re the ones providing diverse, quality housing stock, not the cookie-cutter developments from PLCs.
We also need robust and tangible support for first-time buyers because without it, demand drops, affecting the entire market.
Skills investment is crucial too. I spend considerable time encouraging young people into construction, but we need clear frameworks for improving workforce skills and labour productivity. How can we build more homes without skilled workers?
I don’t expect a Budget where the government can give without taking. But unless there are fundamental incentives for businesses to invest and thrive, we’re heading for economic stagnation. The housebuilding industry is already there.
The Chancellor can be brave. But that will take genuine commitment to supporting the SMEs that actually build homes, create jobs and drive growth.
This might be our last chance. I hope she takes it.
