More than a whiff of Déjà vu?
“The definition of madness, they say, is to keep doing what doesn’t work in the hope that this time it will be different,” says Mike Rigby of MRA Research. “Is the new Government following in a previous Government’s footsteps?”
Twelve years ago, at the CPA Spring lunch, Greg Barker, a new Housing Minister was going to update the industry about the Green Deal.
The day before, the Minister had tried to pull out, citing a meeting at No 10. His officials made out the lunch was a modest stand-up buffet, so he wouldn’t be missed. Incredulous the organisers reminded them that construction is larger than aerospace, automotive and pharmaceuticals combined, and they would not dream of pulling out if it was an automotive event.
Eventually he agreed, but it was obvious the Minister had been poorly briefed. The more he talked about the Green Deal, the less he seemed to know. He said they had consulted widely and had asked “British Gas, B&Q, and Next!” He also said, they’d asked Saint-Gobain and Travis Perkins, who were on his table.
When he finished, the MD of MKM, stood up and said it was all very well talking to TP, but what about the mass of the market, what was the Government doing to make sure the Green Deal worked and wasn’t channelled through big companies? Replying, it was obvious the Minister did not recognise MKM or grasp the distinction between B&Q and builders’ merchants, and he didn’t have a good answer.
Had Government consulted industry experts, the Green Deal would probably now be making a significant contribution to the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock. But they didn’t, and it was a fiasco.
The new Labour Government has promised to build 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament by fixing the planning system, unblocking several large projects, and building some new towns. But it has not yet shown that it is listening to the industry, which doubts we have the building materials’ capacity, the skilled workforce capacity, or enough power, grid connections and water supply in the right places to build them.
The Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has named the line-up of experts to sit on her New Towns Taskforce. They are tasked with delivering a step change in house building. The 10-strong taskforce includes policy and planning experts, and the economist Dame Kate Barker whose 2004 report, UK Housing Supply, recommended increasing the delivery of new homes in England by 70,000 to 120,000 a year to help lower the rate of house price growth and mitigate issues of market volatility, reduced affordability, and macroeconomic instability.
As the House Builders Federation recently observed, England would have two million more homes today had the Barker Review’s recommendations for increasing housing supply been implemented.
But looking at her list of experts, where are the national housebuilders, the contractors and small to medium housebuilders, the supply chain and industry experts? Government needs a workable plan not just the hopes and aspirations of analysts, policy makers, and talkers not doers.
Did they ask the industry who should be on the taskforce? Did the Deputy Prime Minister’s officials forget, or did they not even think of it?
This article was first published in the Builders Merchants News magazine.
