Everything South Australian home buyers need to know about the Hickinbotham job cuts

The housing giant announced job cuts last week. Here’s what South Aussie home buyers need to know.

Last week, South Australia’s largest residential building company, Hickinbotham Group, made the “difficult decision” to lay off 15 staff.

Despite the move, a Hickinbotham spokesperson said the layoffs would not impact builds for both current and future clients.

Here’s everything home buyers need to know.

Who is Hickinbotham Group?

The housing giant has been building homes for South Australians for 70 years and has major projects spread across Greater Adelaide and the Adelaide Hills.

Founded by chairman Alan Hickinbotham with his father Alan R. Hickinbotham, the family-owned company has built more than 50,000 homes and developed more than 60 community estates, housing over 120,000 people.

From 2020-22, they reportedly built 1843 new homes, which was more than three times the volume of its nearest competitor.

Hickinbotham Group managing director Michael Hickinbotham and sister Ruth Vagnarelli at their Clover Park display home. Picture: AAP Image/Dean Martin

Who has been let go and why?

15 staff from the company’s sales team were made redundant.

Hickinbotham Group have blamed a delay in land being released by the state government for the redundancies which were “made only after exhausting all other options.”

In a statement on Friday, they said that the delays had caused “significant challenges” for not only themselves but also the broader housing industry.

Hickinbotham made 15 staff from the company’s sales team redundant blaming a delay in new land releases by the government. Picture: Supplied

How has the state government responded?

On Friday, Housing and Urban Development Minister Nick Champion said that “infrastructure takes time”, and that the Premier’s Housing Roadmap was still on track.

“Our job as a government is to put in the big pipeline, the big projects of land release of infrastructure in order that businesses can plan effectively,” he said.

He was also optimistic that the impacted staff would be hired by other companies in no time.

Premier Peter Malinauskas announced South Australia's Housing Roadmap in a major speech at the Adelaide Convention Centre last June. Picture: Keryn Stevens

What is the Premier’s Housing Roadmap?

Premier Peter Malinauskas’ Housing Roadmap, which aims to address the state’s housing crisis, is a plan to deliver more homes for South Australians through legislation changes and training.

Unveiled last June, the plan involves spending up to $1bn on water mains and sewerage to allow for more land to be released to residential building giants, including Hickinbotham Group.

The timeline for the map estimated $1.5 billion to be funded jointly by government, industry and taxpayers for SA Water infrastructure to unlock 40,000 new homes over four years.

Housing Industry Association executive director SA Stephen Knight. Picture: Supplied

What does the industry say about the issue?

The Executive Director of the Home Industry Association SA, Stephen Knight, said the industry was aware of the delay and that it was a problem “everybody” was working to solve.

“It's not unknown that we’ve had issues with land supply, and that’s being driven by the enormous demand for housing over the last couple of years,” he said.

“It (demand) was driven primarily by the home builder grant which sucked up what was available land.

“Since that time, we’ve had strong growth mainly due to population growth, which is a good thing for the state of course, but getting land ready to build on is a time-consuming exercise.”

Mr Knight said land in SA was, “for a long time”, released by the state government in a “timely way”, due to slow population growth, but said the industry had fallen behind recently due to that changing.

“The government has recognised the problem and I don’t think anybody is backing away from that,” he said.

“They’ve put some money on the table, $1.4b, but you can solve this in a day.

“I think everybody is endeavouring to get the problem fixed, it’s just been a combination of things that’s driven us to this point, as I say, through high demand.”