Search Acumen comments on the Autumn Budget 2024

Andrew Lloyd , Managing Director at Search Acumen, says:

“Despite the backdrop of tax rises and sombre economic prudence in today’s budget, the Government continues to pledge money for housing, particularly to create new social and affordable homes. A reinvigorated approach to one of the UK’s most significant challenges is to be welcomed, but in addition to tackling supply side issues through new funding, we also need to modernise the market, putting in place the digital infrastructure we need to deliver friction-free growth. We don’t want to see great work being done to prime the pump for new housing, only for progress to stall because of planning hold ups or transaction delays, issues which can be particularly prevalent for larger portfolios of affordable housing that require a huge amount of due diligence to plan, build and sell.

“A holistic approach that looks at how we tackle the totality of challenges facing the housing sector is essential and this includes improving the functioning of the market through digitisation and harnessing AI to revolutionise everything from our planning system to legal due diligence.”