Keir Starmer steps in to No10 with much to do and the economy in a perilous state. He would be wise to engage with the built environment sector more successfully than his predecessors, says Richard Steer
I was much cheered to see that, within a week of assuming power, the new Chancellor had invited some of the great and the good from the built environment to Number 11 for a coffee and a chat. Representatives from the likes of Berkeley, Barratt, Taylor Wimpey, Skanska, Jacobs and Mace, plus several energy companies and even Sir John Armitt had over an hour with Rachel Reeves.
Apparently, there was no talk of new infrastructure spending but, since housebuilding was at the heart of the King’s Speech, it is no coincidence that housebuilders would appear to have dominated the invitation list. Labour has already said that it sees the private sector providing the 1.5m homes over five years that it wants to build, so it seems shrewd to get them onside at an early stage.
>> Also read: A new government and a chance for construction to be heard
Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has the brief for housing and the newly appointed construction minister, Sarah Jones, officially took up her role after the meeting – both tasked with delivering on Keir Starmer’s promise to be “builders, not blockers”.
Changing the planning system to make it easier to build was a core element of the Labour manifesto, but surely to do that they need to employ many thousands more planning officers
Ms Jones, the MP for Croydon West, was responsible for industry and decarbonisation during her years in the shadow cabinet and has been appointed as a minister of state in both the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero since Labour’s landslide victory.
But is all their talk of large-scale social, affordable and accessible housing provision realistic? Statistics from the previous government showed local planning authorities were meeting deadlines for minor applications in only 10% of cases, and only 1% handled major applications within the legal 13-week time limit.
Changing the planning system to make it easier to build was a core element of the Labour manifesto, but surely to do that they need to employ many thousands more planning officers. What was the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) under the Conservatives supported the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) in its aim to address the critical shortage of planning enforcement officers across councils nationwide but did little other than offer a shoulder to cry on.
Enforcement officers serve as the cornerstone of the current planning system, safeguarding the public and the environment from infringements of planning control, violations of planning laws, and poorly conceived developments. However, the sector is grappling with a substantial crisis in resourcing, skills and performance.
According to research commissioned by DLUHC and conducted by the RTPI in 2022, a staggering 80% of planners expressed concerns about the insufficient number of enforcement officers to manage the workload. Additionally, 70% of councils have reported difficulties in recruiting enforcement officers over the past five years. This has not improved in the 18 months since the survey was conducted.
>> Also read: Labour’s planning reforms have given hope to housebuilders, says HBF chief
It is all very well ripping up the national planning framework and making it easier to build in theory but, in practice, the new government may find it much harder to implement. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill promises to provide more resources to hire 300 new planners which Labour has said will help speed up approvals for new homes, but it takes time to train a planning officer.
They need to have an accredited degree or postgraduate qualification, have completed at least two years’ work experience in town planning, as well as have attained professional status in the field of urban planning in many cases.
It is all very well championing AI as the future, but unless I have missed something, we have not yet trained ChatGPT to lay bricks.
Let us assume that the planning aspect is taken care of by a presumption to build, taking planning officers out of the system and mandating housebuilding targets for councils. Who is going to construct?
It is all very well championing AI as the future but, unless I have missed something, we have not yet trained ChatGPT to lay bricks
Noble Francis, economist at the Construction Products Association, sounded a note of caution recently when he heralded the current shortage of available labour. He pointed to figures showing there were 2.08 million people employed in construction in the first quarter of 2024, down 1.9% year-on-year.
The construction sector is one of the largest in the UK, contributing almost £90bn to the UK economy and employing around 10% of the nation’s workforce, but the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has made it clear that the UK needs another 250,000 construction workers by 2028 to keep up with the sector’s forecasted growth.
The answer to the labour deficit post-Brexit was thought to be MMC or modular construction but, just over 14 months ago, our industry was hit by the shattering news that insurance giant L&G was to stop production at its timber-frame modular housing factory, seven years after setting it up and after racking up at least £174m of losses.
L&G had promised to build 3,500 homes a year from its plant in Sherburn-in-Elmet, near Selby in North Yorkshire, but said it had “not been able to secure the necessary scale of pipeline” to make the business a success and was beginning a redundancy consultation with all employees.
They are not the only ones to have put a toe in the modular construction housebuilding water and found it unappealing.
Modular construction may yet be rejuvenated and respond to short-term labour shortages, but only if the planning log-jams are eased and certainty of pipeline is guaranteed.
From initial indications, it would seem that the new government is offering our sector the opportunity to build more homes, providing they are the right type of houses in the right location at the right price. They want the private sector to fund and rely on a presumption to build and I am not sure this will be an attractive offer to shareholders.
Someone once said that in politics you campaign in poetry and once elected you govern in prose. I think the current government will need to share more than a cup of coffee and some Jammie Dodgers with our sector to realise their dream of a housebuilding utopia.
Hopefully, those around the table at number 11 were able to explain this stark reality to the chancellor.
Richard Steer is chair of Gleeds Worldwide and a Building The Future Think Tank commissioner
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