The BBC3 Brickies is about getting more people in to the building trade and taking up an apprenticeship. Every Monday at 9pm

 

Brickies to trowel up again as BBC Three series is set to air

 

A TV series which made stars out of young bricklayers is heading back to our screens later this month.

 

BBC Three’s Brickies is back for another hot summer of building houses and chasing dreams.

 

The first episode of series two of the popular docuseries, which follows the lives and loves of young recruits at Derby-based Hodgkinson Builders, airs at 9pm on Monday, March 20, followed by Episode 2 at 9.30pm.

 

The full series is also available to view on BBC iPlayer on the same day.

 

The programme shows how life on the trowel is hard, and emotions run high on building sites full of fun, friendships and fallouts. 

 

As well as the banter, it also highlights how Hodgkinson is tackling skills shortages, by encouraging more young people into the trade - with some of the brickies revealing they can earn up to £1,200 for a 35-hour week.

 

There are some new faces, as well as old ones, and as well as a return to Stoke, the gang are working on new sites - in Mansfield, luxury houses in Leicester and on the building of a 5ft plinth to support a memorial bust of former Derby County player Reg Harrison.

 

Keeping the brickies in check is site manager Jack Smith, who is originally from Ilkeston but now lives in Giltbrook, Nottinghamshire.

 

The 32-year-old said: “There are a few new faces - new apprentices and new labourers this time around.

“The show continues to follow the lives of brickies and labourers as they earn money and pursue jobs and careers.”

 

Jack added that he was still getting used to being recognised since last series.

 

“You still get people coming up to you in the street or in Asda, saying ‘are you that person off bricklayers?’, which is nice,” he said.

The programme proved so popular, earlier this year, Brickies was up against Love Island in the British Broadcast Awards, with the team rubbing shoulders with stars including athlete Mo Farrah. Both Brickies and Love Island lost out to Welsh language programme Drych: Fi, Rhyw ac Anabledd.

 

Jack said: “Going to the awards night was nice - it makes you realise how big the show’s been. Getting nominated against Love Island, it’s like ‘all of a sudden, this is really happening’. We just keep riding the wave of it and seeing where the show goes - hopefully there will be a Series three.”

 

Ian Hodgkinson, founder and managing director of Pride Park-based Hodgkinson Builders, can’t wait to see the new episodes.

 

He said: “After the success of the first series, the second series is due to be aired in a few weeks, and it is just unbelievable.

 

“We started filming last June and finished in August.  

“To be asked to take part in a second series just proves how popular the show is. The reception received from Series one was absolutely phenomenal.”

 

He added: “Being a part of it has been so much fun, but it’s also been a fantastic platform in spreading the word about bricklaying as a career and the aspirations of our young workers.

 

“We had lots of great feedback in particular from females, who had been inspired by Jeorgia and Molly’s determination in Series one. It’s so inspiring.”

Are House Prices defying the market ?

 

Average house prices have risen by nearly £3,000 this month as the property market continues to resist predictions that the UK’s lacklustre economic performance will cause a significant slump during 2023.

Despite low growth and historically high mortgage rates, which have prompted forecasts of a 10% fall in prices this year, the average home is on the market at £365,357 in March, a rise of 0.8% on the previous month.

The increase is below the typical March rise of 1% over the past 20 years but still reflects a market “on a much more stable footing than many anticipated”, according to property website Rightmove, which published the data.

Rightmove said the market was recovering from a spike in borrowing costs at the end of last year, when policies put forward by Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng spooked international investors and sent mortgage costs soaring.

Average rates for a five-year fixed deal with a 15% deposit soared to 5.89% in October, shortly after Kwarteng’s doomed “mini-budget”, prompting estate agent Savills to predict a 10% slump in prices during 2023, amid the wider economic malaise.

The rate for the same mortgage deal has since fallen back to 4.65%.

Although this is still well above the 2.48% seen this time last year, estate agent Knight Frank said borrowing costs could fall further, as lenders compete to win business in a less buoyant market.

 

Central banks have also been tipped to think twice about raising base rates, given turmoil in the banking sector after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the crisis engulfing Credit Suisse.

Inflation has also edged down to 10.1% from a peak of 11.1%, also registered in October last year, while recent economic figures have shown the UK narrowly averting a recession.

The improved economic environment drove up house prices in March, Rightmove said, compared with February, when prices were unchanged.

Underlying factors, such as the UK’s apparent inability to build new homes, are also preventing large price falls.

The rate of new housebuilding is predicted to fall in England, the Home Builders Federation (HBF) has warned, owing to a range of government policies that threaten to slow development dramatically.

 

The HBF said this would exacerbate the country’s housing crisis and make it harder than at any point in recent history to become a homeowner.

Yet property experts are still predicting an overall price fall during 2023, with mortgage rates and inflation still stubbornly high amid the broader cost of living crisis, coupled with factors specific to the housing market.

Downwards price pressure will persist as more owners come to the end of fixed-rate deals and supply picks up from the lows of the pandemic,” said Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank.

“We expect a 5% decline this year across the UK.”

The Rightmove data also showed discrepancies, with major variation depending on region and the price bracket of homes hitting the market.

The Spring Budget Thoughts

ITS TIME TO GO AFTER THE NIMBYS DON'T TAX LANDLORDS,

Will housing be high on  the Chancellors agenda ? will anything be done about the housing crisis ? 

The Spring Budget is upon us ..

Housing supply issues are to do with demand and not enough new homes   being built. There isn’t enough houses available to rent therefore putting the cost of renting a home up another demand problem. Anything in short supply will go up in value just like the issue we had with toilet roll’s during Covid and tomatoes at the moment.

Every house built contributes around £108,000 to the local economy.

The following is a report in the Sunday Times from David Byers Deputy Editor.

Jeremy Hunt is again thought to be considering milking landlords and second-home buyers for more tax in Wednesday's budget.

And for a chancellor in urgent search of new revenue streams, why not? After all, since George Osborne introduced the 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge for those buying additional properties in April 2016, it has been a lovely little earner.

Since 2016-17, government figures show the surcharge has raised £10.1 billion for HMRC and, in the 2021-22 tax year, a whopping 46 per cent of all stamp duty receipts came from buyers who were liable to pay the charge on top of their normal stamp duty.

The abacus looked so inviting that, in April 2021, then-chancellor Rishi Sunak decided to introduce an additional 2 per cent levy to be paid by foreign buyers, which has raised £219 million so far.

On the face of it, there is much to like about another stamp duty rise that targets those for whom most of the public hold the smallest of violins. But in evaluating the success of any policy, we need to work out whether it does anything more than simply bring in money - after all, Osborne originally claimed it was integral to his "bold plan to back families who aspire to buy their own home".

The former chancellor's thesis was that landlords were bed-blocking first-time buyers, and he hoped the extra tax would force them to stop buying in such large numbers, while existing ones would balk at a series of other tax clampdowns announced at the same time and sell up.

But, while the extra stamp duty has raised a lot of cash, 12.2 per cent of properties sold in Britain last year were still bought by an investor, according to the estate agent Hamptons - the highest proportion of sales since 2016.

English Housing Survey data suggested the number of households in the private-rented sector has been unchanged between 2020-21 and 2021-22.

A separate Hamptons analysis calls into question Osborne's philosophy - that landlords and first-time buyers compete with each other. It finds there is only a one-in-five chance that a first-time buyer will find themselves up against an investor.

Meanwhile, first-time buyers are being driven away from the market in their droves because they can't afford a home, particularly since mortgage rates skyrocketed from September onwards (thanks Kwasi) and the government's Help to Buy equity loan scheme ended.

The banking body UK Finance says there were 370,220 first-time buyers in 2022, down from 405,360 in 2021. Savills predicts the number will drop to 200,000 this year.

This all brings us back to the one inalienable fact in all of this - that the only solution to the housing crisis will be to boost our paltry supply. However, the Home Builders' Federation says that as few as 120,000 homes could be built this year

- not even half of the government's

300,000

annual target.

To build more,

Mr Hunt knows he must overhaul our rotten planning system, but that involves confronting the nimbys - aka Conservative voters.

Taxing landlords or second-homers brings nice headlines, but.

won't dent the housing crisis that is short termism.