ARL Autumn Budget 2024 response

Brendan Geraghty, CEO of the Association for Rental Living (ARL), the membership association and representative body for all institutionally backed, professionally managed purpose-built rental living sectors including urban and suburban single-family and multi-family rental, co-living and later living, comments:

 

 “The acknowledgement of Build to Rent in the Autumn Budget is recognition by Government of the role that BTR in all its guises can make to housing investment and growth.

“The Autumn Budget provided the Government with the perfect opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to ‘fixing the foundations’ by putting housing front and centre of their plans – yet they did not go far enough today. Housing is the stable foundation to all investments and growth that have been identified in the Budget and industrial strategy, and whilst the reference to support of Build to Rent is welcomed, real certainty for investors is essential.

“Whilst the ARL welcomes that the Government has acknowledged, through its previous announcements, the massive demand for new homes, outlined its commitment to transforming the experience of private renting through its proposed Renters’ Rights Bill and recognised the role of Build to Rent in the NPPF Review, we continue our call to view housing as foundational to the future economic growth of the country.  

“Housing should be right at home in the UK’s new modern Industrial Strategy as being critical to facilitating the growth which the Government desires. The £3 billion of additional support for SMEs and the Build to Rent sector, in the form of housing guarantee schemes, is welcomed, although greater detail is needed.

The increased funding in social homes in the Affordable Homes Programme is also welcomed as part of a mixed-tenure approach to housing development but this, and future Budgets, should bolster and facilitate investment into housing of all tenures, for the long-term.

“The Government’s desires to attract private investment, both domestic and international, to the UK is welcomed by the ARL. The Build to Rent sector has already attracted £35 billion of institutional investment in the last decade and £800m in the last quarter alone; it has the ability to attract £300 billion of domestic and international inward investment. Investors require certainty and incentive however and we hope that this Budget moves attitudes in that direction.

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, promised to “turbocharge the delivery of 1.5 million homes” in her maiden Budget. This will be very challenging with current low levels of construction starts and the contraction of PRS. To achieve this objective the Government needs to smooth the road to institutional investment in BTR and implement the recommendations of the recently published Radix Big Tent Housing Commission Report. The ARL urges the Government to work with the sector to enable the investment required to deliver over 2 million good quality, professionally managed homes to rent across the UK.”