THE WORD AT WESTMINSTER
This is a prime opportunity to make the government listen to small builders’ needs, says Jeremy Gray, Head of External Affairs at the FMB WHAT’S UP AT WESTMINSTER?
M Ps are away for the summer but return with a bang for their party conferences in September, with thousands – including the FMB – heading to cities around the country to make their cases. This is a prime opportunity to communicate the importance of the nation’s builders to decision-makers while they are all in one place and in listening mode. We have a packed agenda from political parties, with updates to follow in the next edition of Master Builder . But for now, here’s what was happening before MPs packed their bags for summer holidays. Licensing momentum gains We continue to push for licensing, with one of the greatest leaps yet for the campaign. You may recall we launched a new outline for licensing in the House of Lords, which I covered in the last issue of this magazine. The research showed massive support for licensing among consumers. We saw great media coverage, with The Sun publishing the story and calling on consumers to choose FMB members when commissioning building work. On the back of all this, the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee supported our calls for licensing, asking the government to introduce a licensing scheme for retrofit work. This was in response to dodgy insulation work that was widely reported earlier in the year. While this won’t cover the whole industry, it’s a leap in the right direction and could help to establish a foothold and template for industry wide implementation.
committee – with a planning officer able to sign it off providing conditions are met. This should speed up the planning process, especially as planning committees can sometimes stall the process of getting homes built. But this proposed solution needs to be backed by funding the development of new planning officers because without well-staffed planning departments, homes will still get stuck in the system. Beyond this change, the government has also announced a new medium site definition – up to 50 homes – which will have certain restrictions streamlined, such as biodiversity net gain, to help sites be built quicker. This will help our members to grow, which is desperately needed as there hasn’t been an SME-housebuilder-turned-large- developer in decades. The spending review We could have seen more from Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, during the spending review, in which she set out her spending priorities against a background of a volatile economy. What we did get was a £39 billion spending package for social housing. But without enabling SMEs to engage in social housing procurement processes, our members will miss out. So we must see this process improved. More positively, there was more than £1 billion pounds pledged to invest in apprenticeships, which is essential given the need for 250,000 construction workers by 2028 to keep the lights on in our industry.
Jeremy Gray is the FMB’s Head of External Affairs
Major planning reforms are coming
Since the last edition of Master Builder , we’ve also seen probably the biggest changes in a generation announced for the planning system. We’re pleased to see that the government has listened to the FMB and will make it easier for small housebuilders to build. The most radical of all changes is that sites of fewer than 10 homes will be dealt with at the planning stage and will no longer have to go to the planning
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Master Builder
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