Supporting SMEs to power the UK’s housing market 

There continues to be uncertainty in the UK housing market.  

Towns like Frome have recently declared a housing crisis due to a lack of available properties for both renters and buyers.  

Meanwhile, in July the UK Government pledged that it will meet its manifesto commitment of building 1 million new homes by the end of this Parliament, in a mission to tackle the housing crisis. 

In Rishi Sunak’s words, “that’s a beautiful new home for a million individual families in every corner of our country.” Which begs the question – who will build these beautiful new homes? 

If you’ve been following the housing market, you’ll know that successive governments have promised to tackle the housing crisis including policies for housebuilders. We’ve seen these types of promises before, yet here we are facing the same dilemma. 

For smaller firms, the current housing market is particularly challenging. SME housebuilders now only contribute to the delivery of 12% of the UK’s housing stock compared to 40% forty years ago.  

It’s clear that change is need – to support not only SME housebuilders, but also the UK’s housing market. 

The SME opportunity  

While there are concerns, it might not be all doom and gloom. Even with an unstable economy and despite government inaction, there are certainly promising opportunities to be had. 

Private sector commentators like SME Capital believe that, fuelled by new technology, SMEs can play a pivotal role in the development of new housing by spurring smart cities and low-carbon urban regeneration projects. This government has also stated that SME housebuilders are “indispensable” to the housebuilding sector, the levelling up agenda and building for the future.  

What’s holding them back, though, according to the Federation of Master Builders, is access to finance and land, compounded by difficulty navigating our complex planning system. That’s why 200 firms wrote a letter to the Prime Minister this year warning about the “existential threat to the survival of businesses” posed by current blocks to deployment. 

Putting Government policies aside, one thing we’ve noticed since working within the AEC industry for some 20+ years is that startups and scaleups often feel like they are costed out compared to larger counterparts. 

Costed out? 

In our arena of technical services, it's very evident that most big tech vendors have complex services and lack transparency on costs. That can leave SMEs feeling that new technologies, like virtual desktops for example, just aren’t accessible. 

A perfect example is Microsoft’s cloud-based Azure platform, which has dynamic scaling and pricing built in, meaning organisations pay for the resources they use. Now this sounds like a good deal for businesses in theory, but in actuality becomes an uncontrolled cost that has to be managed through over provisioning and limiting use. For an SME, that’s just unworkable, particularly for those needing to work on projects that require longer hours beyond the standard 9-5, as can be the norm for the AEC industry. And for SMEs which need to be agile in a competitive market and show how they stand out against more established players, such approaches put critical new tech out of reach. 

The future of high-performance SME collaboration  

That’s why affordable and accessible technology is so vital to the future of the housebuilding sector, as well as the broader AEC industry. It’s needed to foster better collaboration, agility and productivity.  

And while we of course can’t promise that technologies will save the UK’s housing market – we need this urgently from government policies – being able to harness the benefits of emerging technology will help SMEs compete and deliver.  

A struggling market creates a need to innovate. We hope to see more and better action from the Government and in the meantime, we will continue to do what we can in championing good technology for organisations no matter their size.  

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