Former development boss Neil Waddington on life after redundancy - 'It wasn't hard to see it coming'

Neil Waddington was managing director of Hurstwood Living, a development company he left Barratt to help found in January 2007, until he was made redundant in April.

“Ultimately, it wasn’t hard to see the redundancy coming. You monitor the market and from Christmas it’s just got harder and harder – the housing market runs on confidence and at the moment each week is worse than the last.

“At the moment the companies just aren’t generating the required sales, and even if the market stabilises soon, there’s going to be very, very limited housing development for the foreseeable future. In a year’s time they might start thinking about taking land and development people on again.

“So I can either hang on and hope to be one of the first to get in or start to look outside the industry. Nobody knows how long it’s going to last. Leaving the industry is something I’m looking at, but the skills I have don’t necessarily seem readily transferable. I could take a step back in my career, but I’ve worked hard to get into a certain position.

“Morale in the industry is very low – nobody can believe it’s got so bad so quickly. The government has said it wants a certain amount of homes – well it can’t do it without an industry.”