One last big push

After the turmoil that has engulfed Westminster over the past few weeks, it wouldn’t be surprising if the industry greeted the arrival of yet another lot of construction and housing ministers with a cynical shrug. The previous incumbents stayed for only a few months, and this lot will only last a year at most before the general election. Some will spend much of that time wondering who to stab while preparing for a long period in opposition, and others will occupy their time with bare-faced shallowness (yes, that does means you, Caroline Flint). It wouldn’t be surprising, but it would be wrong. In fact, if the person you’re talking to is

half-deaf, you really have to shout, and the industry has much to shout about: it is facing its toughest years in living memory, and government figures out this week showed a record fall in output in the past quarter; the partnering agenda is on the rack and as Kevin Cammack reminds us on page 36, it’s a bleak outlook for anyone relying on public spending, whichever party wins power. And let’s remember, the last days of the Major government brought us the Construction Act, the industry’s most important piece of legislation for decades. And looking at it with the glass half full, those short-lived ministers will have to hurry if they’re to make their names …

For housing, where John Healey, the former local government minister, has replaced Margaret Beckett, we have a politician with a reputation for getting his head round the brief. What’s more, he knows the department and he goes down well with councils. His key objective is to do nothing that would jeopardise the fragile housing market. A number of indicators have been pointing to prices stabilising, or even rising. And as we report on page 20, housebuilders are taking sites out of hibernation – thanks in part to government initiatives like HomeBuy Direct. True, there’s no prospect of brickmakers scurrying to de-mothball factories, but the view is looking brighter than it has for many months.

What housebuilders need most is for mortgage lending to pick up. Healey needs to speed up the delivery of social housing, too, so it’s luck for him that he has a first-rate lieutenant in Sir Bob Kerslake at the Homes and Communities Agency. Kerslake is already reviewing new models of funding affordable housing. The social housing budget peaks this year, which means that it’s essential that the HCA finds ways of turning grant into equity that can be turned back into more funding down the line. So, don’t worry about policy, Mr Healey – concentrate on delivery.

Now to the construction minister, which at the time of writing looked like being Ian Lucas. If so, he will become the ninth minister in eight years. Although direct responsibility for construction is likely to fall to a junior minister in a sprawling department, it’s not all bad news. Pat McFadden, Lord Mandelson’s deputy in the Commons and a Cabinet attendee, has acknowledged that construction’s representation in Whitehall is a joke, and that a chief construction officer ought to be appointed. If McFadden and his team achieve one thing this year for our sector it should be to ensure the appointment of a civil servant with the rank and talent needed to steer and co-ordinate policy-making. Presently, bits of the industry are taken care of (or not) by 13 spending departments (although at least the merger of innovations and skills and business and enterprise puts apprentices and the businesses they’re supposed to be training for in the same bag).

So we need a champion for the sector who will be able to stick around long after polling day and the strutting, fretting ministers have gone. That would be a worthwhile legacy for any construction minister – and any self-respecting lobbyist.

Denise Chevin, editor