Certainty is a scarce resource in 2025. You digest the news in the morning along with your cornflakes, but by lunchtime the world always seems to have moved on. Neil Jefferson, chief executive of the Home Builders Federation (HBF), was on the sharp end of this problem recently, being required to produce some documentation for his organization after a meeting with government. “Every time I went to sign it off, things had moved on again,” he recalls.

The HBF’s members deliver around 80% of new homes built each year, and as its chief, Jefferson is responsible for a representing an industry which has historically thrived on stability navigate these uncertain times. But while the global picture has everybody scratching their heads, back home Jefferson has some cause for optimism.

For the first time in many years, they have a government that sees the sector as a friend rather than an enemy. In the late days of the last Conservative government, the HBF found it difficult enough to even get a meeting with Michael Gove and his ministers, let alone get their way in policy battles. By contrast, Jefferson praises the “level of engagement” with the new government. “Pro-development agenda is really helpful overall for the industry,” he says. “At the end of the outgoing government there was a bit of a doom loop going on. That negativity does pervade”.