Callcutt's housing report: still no response from ministers

Almost five months after he produced his report on how to improve delivery to meet ambitious government housing targets, John Callcutt has still not heard back from ministers, he revealed yesterday.

Callcutt was drafted into the conference to offer his thoughts on how to deliver housing in a financially challgenging market, following his report /The Callcutt Review of Housebuilding Delivery/, which was published in November last year.

But he said he had received little feedback from government since then.
“To be absolutely honest I haven't heard from government since delivering the report,” he said.

“I know that broadly some of the recommendations I made on zero carbon have been taken up and institutions have been set up to deliver on that, but I knew that already because I released that bit early.”

“As far as the rest of it is concerned, I do hear that things are happening here and there but I have to say that I am deafened by the silence,” he added.

However he indicated that the reaction from the housebuilders, planners and architects has been much better. “I've had great feedback from institutions that are interested in housing supply. I've been overwhelmed by people's reactions to it,” he said.

Meanwhile Housing Forum chief executive Shelagh Grant also called on the government to issue its opinions on the findings soon. “It was considered to be an excellent piece of work and we would urge for some sort of response to that to come through,” she said.

Callcutt's report, which appeared on 22 November 2007 concluded that the housebuilding industry is ready to deliver the government's targets for an additional 240,000 homes a year by 2016, and three million more homes by 2020. But it warned that the challenge would be to deliver homes where they are needed, at an affordable price, as well as meeting zero carbon targets.