Switching the industry's focus to smaller sites will help speed up the delivering of new housing, according to the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) Chief Executive, Brian Berry.

Mr Berry made his comments in response to Prime Minister Theresa May's speech at a national planning conference on Monday, where she outlined proposals to maximise the use of land, strengthen Green Belt protections and place a greater emphasis on converting planning permissions into housing.

Mr Berry said small sites tend to deliver more quickly, while smaller builders also have "every incentive" to build and sell quickly.

"More opportunities for these smaller developments will diversify the market, boost capacity and speed up delivery," he said.

"The Government has clearly recognised this, and is today setting out a raft of changes to national planning policy that will encourage more small sites to come forward. We particularly welcome the move to ensure that at least 20% of the sites identified for housing in local authority's plans are smaller sites."

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Mr Berry continued: "However, we also need to be aware that the pace of building homes cannot be simply dictated. Those whose business is building houses have very few incentives to just sit on land. SME builders in particular have every incentive to build and sell as quickly as they can, so that they can recoup their investment and move on to the next project – nothing else would make financial sense.

"But developments can be stalled and slowed down for perfectly good reasons – from the financing difficulties which can often affect smaller builders, to downturns in market conditions, Building a house is a very significant investment, and house builders who build without being sure they can sell, don't stay in business very long."

Continuing, Mr Berry said the Government "needs to make sure that rhetoric doesn't get ahead of reality" when it comes to pushing back against developers who have a particularly poor track record of delivery.

"It should recognise that attempts to force building at a rate which makes poor commercial sense could end up slowing down delivery," he said.

"This could end up discouraging rather than incentivising the SME builders and new market entrants we need to diversify the market."

(LM/JP)