Landlords insurance holders could well be interested to hear the latest news on housing availability and self-builds, from this week.

The Home Builders Federation has called upon the government to increase the accessibility to both these parts of the industry following comments from Grant Shapps.

The housing minister launched a new action plan for the self-build industry which he says could be the turning point for ordinary people.
Steve Turner is a spokesman for the Home Builders Federation.

And while he welcomes the announcement, he says self-builds are only a small part of the solution to encourage access to housing.

Mr Turner comments: “Mortgage availability remains the biggest short-term constraint on house building and housing provision”.

He goes on to say the planning system also needs addressing.

He comments that “we need to see the nuts and bolts of this [system] emerge as soon as possible.”

And a specialist in managing residential developments on behalf of owners, freeholders and developers has also passed comment on buy to let insurance holders this week.

Roger Southam is chairman and chief executive of Chainbow, and he thinks there’s certain avenues the coalition must go down to bolster the buy to let sector.

He explains the one thing he finds appalling is that the government says it’s not going to entertain regulation for letting managers and block managers.

Chainbow thinks that this could end up giving many buy to let insurance holders that have gone down this path, a bad name.

Mr Southam says he knows not of any other profession or sector of the financial world that would allow the amount of money to be held that is held by people who don’t need qualification at all.

He says: “You could step out of prison, open yourself up as a letting manager or block manager, take people’s service charge money and run off with it.

“And there’s no need to have any form of qualification or anything else, you don’t have to know what you’re doing.”

He says that buy to let insurance holders in this situation therefore have to try and demonstrate how professional you are and how different you are – as opposed to the government taking control via regulation.

He remarks that there’s an obvious fallacy in someone being allowed to operate and take peoples money without client money protection.

Mr Southam says: “In one fell swoop, you’ve certainly made it easier to know where the cowboys are.”