By Andrew Leslie, chief executive – The Association for Project Safety
LABOUR’S quest is for the industry to build 370,000 new homes in England every year to hit its promise of 1.5 million by 2029. To aid this, local authorities are being told to give developers permission to build. Yes, a planning overhaul.
Think. Starting from scratch – Year Zero or to be more precise 4th July 2024 – when Labour won the General Election – the clock is ticking. To get to planning stage, we need some drawings – hence, we need designs. That doesn’t happen overnight!
We need the land – OK there are some landbanks – oh, and of course grey belts, ‘poor quality and ugly areas’ on parts of protected land, called the Green Belt. All of that takes time. The clock is ticking. Submit the planning application (remember we need to make our margins and our profit – please maximise the plot ratio). Hassle time, delay. The clock is still ticking!
Let’s face it, unless there were a significant number of shovel-ready projects, in all probability the clock has ticked away a year before previously unplanned projects were ready with planning consent. And OK, risk taker developers will have asked their design teams to move to construction readiness – but of course the new Building Safety Act and amended building regulations require new appointments (Principal Designer etc.) and clients have new legal duties – more confusion, more haggling, more time. And yes, the clock is still ticking.
Right, now that we have that kind of sorted, do we not need infrastructure – roads, sewers, services? Good grief, that will hold us up. And schools, shops – oh, God help us!
So, let’s get on with it – three years to complete 1,5 million homes.
But wait! Have we checked our resources – our workforce and availability of materials? Order times, all of that. We could go MMC (Modern Methods of Construction), go offsite for prefabrication. Oh dear, that sector does not have the capacity either.
OK, let’s just do what we can, despite all the logistical problems. Surely nothing more will hold us back.
The APS issued five key asks to the prospective governments in 2024. The first three were:
- Immediate allocation of funds and resources to training centres and educational institutions – with enforceable output target.
- Fast-track visa processes for skilled immigrants with proven experience and identifiable, ‘provable’ skills in the construction sector.
- Partner with industry leaders and educational institutions to design and implement effective programmes relevant to modern methods of construction and developing technologies.
As far as ask 1 is concerned, The UK Government has announced plans to ‘refocus’ funding away from Level 7 (‘Masters’ Level’) apprenticeships from January 2026.
According to the government, the new measures will allow levy funding to be ‘rebalanced towards training at lower levels, where it can have the greatest impact’.
This aims to deliver up to 45,000 additional training places to upskill the domestic workforce and reduce reliance on migration in priority sectors, as announced in the recent immigration white paper.
This will not really impact on the target for housebuilding – apprenticeships take time and becoming a competent tradesperson even longer. This is a medium-term initiative, flawed or otherwise!
As far as their immigration White Paper is concerned, it acknowledges the lack of strategic workforce planning and little sign of effective partnerships between government and industry in developing the key skills in the construction sector.
The government plans to lift the skills threshold to Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) level 6 (degree equivalent roles) from the current RQF level 3 (below degree level). There are other significant changes. The point is that many roles previously eligible via the skilled worker route, may no longer qualify unless they are listed on the ‘temporary shortage list’.
The construction sector is bound to be affected by the rise in skill level to degree level, given that a number of key construction roles are currently considered to be below that – for example, bricklayers, roofers and construction supervisors. These new constraints could further hinder efforts to meet critical infrastructure and housing demands, including the ambitious but now mostly discredited pledge to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
And what of Scotland? When I worked for RIAS from 2006-2009, there was a notional housing target of 35,000 new builds per year talked about. In 2008-09, there were 21,400 completions in Scotland, a decrease of 17% on the previous year. Starts also fell, by 26% from 26,900 in 2007-08 to 20,000 in 2008-09. New housing supply in Scotland was 20,364 in 2023-24, a decrease of 3,984 homes (-16.4%) since 2022-23. Not much change over the 15 or so years, and does that mean that the industry is at capacity? Probably.
To make things worse, in a boom-and-bust economy, during economic hard times completions and sales slow down (prices may even fall) and worse, skilled tradespersons leave the industry and mostly never return.
The moral in the tale? Know your industry, be realistic, and don’t make targets you cannot reach. The legislation in England seems to be working against UK Government targets, suggesting that the thinking is not joined up. The UK Government is now being widely reported for its policy U-turns, but a well-informed observer would not be wrong in saying that they seem to be going round in circles.
