Housebuilder Barrowcliffe cuts completions forecast by 2,000 homes blaming ‘planning logjam’

Barrowcliffe Homes, one of the largest housebuilders in the country, has cut its forecast for the year by 2,000 homes and warned that the government’s target of 1.5m new homes by 2029 is “receding, not approaching”, as its shares fell 9% on Wednesday.

The Warwick-based company said it now expected to complete about 9,500 homes in the year to December, down from the 11,500 it told investors to expect in February. It blamed slow planning decisions, a shortage of bricklayers and a “subdued” first-time buyer market, and said pre-tax profit would be between £280m and £300m, about a fifth below analysts’ expectations.

Barrowcliffe said 40 of its sites, with capacity for about 6,800 homes, were waiting for a planning decision from a council that had already missed the 13-week statutory deadline. In 11 cases the delay was more than a year. The company said it had slowed the opening of new sites because it could not be confident of the pipeline behind them.

“The reforms are real and we welcome them, but the people who have to implement them are not there,” said the chief executive, Andrew Collings. “Half the planning departments we deal with have lost a third of their staff since 2020. You can change the rules as often as you like; if there is nobody to read the application it does not get built.”

The company also pointed to a 12% rise in the cost of labour on its sites over 18 months, with bricklayers in the south-east commanding day rates of more than £300. It said the government’s construction skills package, announced last year, would not produce qualified tradespeople until 2028 at the earliest.

Analysts said the warning was unlikely to be the last. Jessica Marlowe, housebuilding analyst at the broker Linden Hargreaves, said: “Barrowcliffe is the first to say it in public, but every builder we cover is running the same numbers. The industry built about 220,000 homes last year. Getting to 300,000 needs sites, people and buyers, and all three are short.”

Housing campaigners accused the sector of using planning as a shield. Dr Nadia Kerr, of the think tank Homes for Britain, said large builders were sitting on permissions for more than 1m homes nationally and that completions tracked the price they could get, not the planning system. “They build at the rate that keeps prices up,” she said. “That has been true for 30 years and a change of government has not altered it.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it had provided £100m to recruit planners and that 300 had been hired since April. A spokesperson said the target remained “ambitious but achievable”. Barrowcliffe will report full-year results in February.