An increased Conservative majority in next month’s General Election could help increase housebuilding, according to Urban & Civic chief executive Nigel Hugill.
“If the Conservatives get an increased majority following a lot of councils and county councils going back to Conservative from no overall control in the May elections, as well as Conservative mayors that were appointed, that vertical integration all the way through the political hierarchy is one that I think will produce a better level of co-ordination than we have seen in the recent past,” he said.
Urban & Civic has benefitted from almost £100m of finance from the Homes & Communities Agency over the past year and this, Hugill said, has been important in accelerating the delivery of its projects and homes.
It now has 33,000 residential plots in its pipeline, 15,000 of which are around Cambridge.
“It is not necessarily just planning preventing delivery now, but the time taken from getting a planning consent to starting on site has increased. I think you will see a revisiting of [the HCA loans], but also there is no silver bullet in housing,” Hugill said.
Urban & Civic saw its EPRA net asset value per share rise by 3.1% in the six months to 31 March to 293p and recorded a total shareholder return of 6.6%.
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