ROOF Blog

Housebuilders and construction workers have begun a campaign to fight off a new tax crackdown on the building trade, which the industry claims will stifle the sector’s recovery and make it difficult to hit government housing targets.

The Home Builders Federation and the Federation of Master Builders will launch its Stop the Unfair Building Tax campaign today to try to persuade the government to rethink proposals that the industry says will push more workers into the black market.

The Government wants to stamp out false self-employed status in the building industry, which it says costs the Exchequer £350 million a year.

It proposes to collect tax and national insurance contributions from an estimated 300,000 workers who claim self-employed status.

Workers will be deemed employees unless they supply their own materials and equipment, or other people’s labour as well as their own.

Evidence is growing that the worst is over in the recession-hit property market following a string of cautiously optimistic assessments from the UK’s leading housebuilders.

Persimmon set the tone this month when it predicted a moderate recovery. Barratt, the UK’s largest housebuilder, and Bovis Homes echoed that sentiment with similarly upbeat forecasts.

The number of new homes being built rose to its highest level for over a year in the three months to October, with work starting on 25,000 new properties, an increase of 27 per cent compared with the same period last year.

However, housebuilders are reluctant to be too bold over the prospects of a sustained recovery because of the fragility of the market and the uncertainty over the continuing availability of mortgages.

‘We are way ahead of where we were this time last year, but we’re not out of the woods yet and there could still be plenty of problems for the industry were the banks to pull back lending,’ said Bovis’ chief executive David Ritchie.