BUILD July 2017

BUILD / July 2017 5 NEWS , Three of the awards presented on the evening – Best Lev- el 1 Carpenter, Best Level 3 Apprentice, and the Award for Brickwork – were sponsored by builders and timber merchants, Covers, which is based on Quarry Lane. The respective winners of the awards were announced as Ol- iver Diment, Jake Hickman and Brandon Harwood-Telfer, who each received a trophy and set of tools courtesy of Covers. Elizabeth Knight, Commercial Delivery Co-ordinator at Chiches- ter College, said: “I would like to thank Covers for their generous donations and for supporting the college’s Construction Prize Giv- ing this year. The evening was a great success and really enjoya- ble for everyone involved. Con- gratulations to all our winners!” Ben Gale, Marketing Manager at Covers, who attended the event, said: “At Covers we run a compre- hensive apprenticeship scheme so we are always keen to invest in the future and those wanting to develop a career in construction. It was fantastic seeing so many talented and determined stars of the future during the evening, and it was a pleasure to support Chichester College. Congratula- tions to all the winners.” For more information about Cov- ers, please visit www.covers.biz . Covers Timber and Builders Mer- chants has been in operation for over 170 years and has a chain of depots throughout the South Coast of England, open to the trade and to the public. For more information, please visit their web- site at: www.covers.biz or www. facebook.com/CoversTimber. earnings. Only 19% of Help to Buy Equity Loan completions to date were for homes worth less than £150,000. If households put down a 5% deposit, the research- ers found that this exceeded the 40% limit of affordability for a me- dian income working age house- hold. It recommends new action to help more low income buyers includ- ing targeting financial subsidies on households with incomes up to one-and-a-half times median income and setting different lev- els for different regions. It calls on the government to pro- vide more advice and guidance to households without a history of ownership to help them into own- ership by managing risks and ex- pectations. It also calls for restrict- ing access to subsidies where a first-time buyer has unfettered access to alternative sources of financial and other support to be- come an owner, such as capital from parents or other relatives. Earlier this year, the Social Mo- bility Commission published re- search which found that the pro- portion of first-time buyers relying on inherited wealth or loans from the bank of ‘mum and dad’ had reached a historic high and the trend looked set to continue. In- creasingly, young people are rely- ing on their parents to help them get a foot on the housing ladder. Over a third of first-time buyers in England (34%) now turn to family for a financial gift or loan to help them buy their home compared to 1 in 5 (20%) 7 years ago. A further 1 in 10 rely on inherited wealth. For 25- to 29-year-olds, home ownership has fallen by more than half in the last 25 years from 63% in 1990 to 31% most recent- ly. Many of those who do manage to buy eventually can only do so at an older age. The Rt Hon Alan Milburn, chair of the Social Mobility Commission, said: “This research provides new evidence that the UK housing market is exacerbating inequal- ity and impeding social mobility. While it is welcome that the gov- ernment is acting to help young people get on the housing ladder, Constructive Rewards’ for Students at Chichester College N Students studying for qualifications in the construction sector have been presented with awards for their hard work during the Construction Prize Giving 2017 at Chichester College. current schemes are doing far too little to help those on low incomes to become home owners. “The intent is good but the execu- tion is poor. Changes to the ex- isting schemes are needed if they are to do more to help more lower income young people and fam- ilies become owner-occupiers. Without radical action, particularly on housing supply, the aspiration that millions of ordinary people have to own their own home will be thwarted.” In its State of the Nation 2016 report, the commission recom- mended that the government should: • Commit to a target of 3 million homes being built over the next decade with one-third - or a million homes - being commissioned by the public sector; • Expand the sale of public sector land for new homes and allow targeted house building on green belt land; • Modify the Starter Home Initi- ative to focus on households with average incomes and ensure these homes when sold are available at the same discount to other low-income households; • Introduce tax incentives to encourage longer private sector tenancies and; • Complement the Heseltine Panel’s plans to redevel- op the worst estates with a matching £140 million fund to improve the opportunities social tenants must get work. The report’s lead author Dr Bert Provan, from the LSE, said: “Most research on low cost home own- ership schemes has focused on the age profile of first-time buy- ers and impact on supply. This research looks at whether they open up home ownership to dif- ferent and more diverse groups of low income households in the UK. It finds that while there are some positive effects of such schemes - such as increasing supply - the impact on improving social mobil- ity is small.” www.gov.uk