Can your chosen political party deliver these vital initiatives for a sector that employs 2.7 million people and contributes 9% GDP?
South Wales, 6 December, 2019 – As the UK awaits a political outcome from next week’s general election, Constructaquote.com, has announced its backing and support of a 12-point priority plan created by the Federation of Master Builders (FMB).
The plan, which outlines vital construction industry initiatives that affect the future of the UK’s entire economy, aims to push the new Government to take urgent action by investing, educating, and by licensing all UK construction firms, among other key reforms.
12 Construction Sector Policies
Make house building a national infrastructure priority
Free up more public land for housing and break up into small plots for small builders
Invest in local authority planning departments to speed up the planning process
Promote vocational education and invest in Further Education
Reform the Apprenticeship levy so it works better for small companies
Introduce a fair and balance post- Brexit immigration system
License all UK construction companies
Introduce mandatory warranties for Building Control approved work
Create a new General Builder Qualification
Create a National Retrofit Strategy
Invest in upskilling builders to build and upgrade homes fit for the future
Cut VAT on home improvement work to 5%
Brian Berry, Chief Executive of FMB said in a recent statement: “In this Brexit election the main political parties mustn’t lose sight of the big issues facing the UK such as the current housing crisis. We are still not building enough new homes, and this has led to an affordability crisis and over-crowding. This election is an opportunity for all parties to publish ambitious plans to turn this situation around. Small builders stand ready to help the new Government not only to build more new homes but also make our existing homes more energy efficient.”
Berry concluded: “Small building companies will also be instrumental in helping the future government tackle other major challenges facing the UK, from helping to tackle the climate crisis to helping to building the hospitals and schools of the future. Our Programme for Government gives 12 clear policies for each of the political parties to adopt to support SME builders. Politicians must not only give the country the gift of resolving Brexit this Christmas, but also a vision for the future of our built environment.”
Whose got your vote and can they deliver?
Here are some key points on what the Labour Party, the Conservative & Unionist Party, and the Brexit Party claim to have planned for Britain’s future if they gain power on 12 December.
- Completion of the HS2 route to Scotland & rail electrification across the country and Wales.
- Investment blitz to upgrade infrastructure in every city, town, and region – housing, care homes, schools, and hospitals.
- Making housing energy-efficient, to reduce fuel poverty.
• Introduce a £1 billion Fire Safety Fund to fit sprinklers and other fire safety measures in all high-rise council and housing association tower blocks, enforce the replacement of dangerous Grenfell style cladding on all high-rise h
homes and buildings, and mandatory building standards and guidance, inspected and enforced by fully trained Fire and Rescue Service fire safety officers.
- Implementation of a new Department for Housing, making Homes England a more accountable national housing agency and put councils in the driving seat.
- A strategy for a flourishing construction sector with a skilled workforce and full rights at work.
- Create a new English Sovereign Land Trust, with powers to buy land more cheaply for low-cost housing. Use public land to build this housing, not sell it off to the highest bidder. Developers will face new ‘use it or lose it’ taxes on stalled housing developments.
- Deliver a new social housebuilding programme of more than a million homes over a decade, with council housing at its heart. By the end of the Parliament build at an annual rate of at least 150,000 council and social homes, with 100,000
of these built by councils for social rent in the biggest council housebuilding
programme in more than a generation.
- Council and housing association homes to be more affordable than market housing and built to higher standards. End the conversion of office blocks to homes that sidestep planning permission through ‘permitted development’.
- Decent Homes programme to bring all council and housing association homes up to a good standard.
- Reform Help to Buy to focus on first-time buyers on ordinary incomes. Introduce a levy on overseas companies buying housing, while giving local people ‘first dibs’ on new homes built in their area.
- Expand and upgrade hostels, turning them into places where people can turn their lives around. Make available 8,000 additional homes for people with a history of rough sleeping. Tackle the wider causes of homelessness, raising the Local Housing Allowance in line with the 30th percentile of local rents, and earmark an additional £1 billion a year for councils’ homelessness services.
The Conservative & Unionist Party
- Building new hospitals
- Investment of £100 billion in additional infrastructure spending on roads, rail, and supply productive investment to repair and refurbish the UK and generate greater growth. Flood defences will receive £4 billion in new funding.
- The biggest ever pothole-filling programme as part of a National Infrastructure Strategy – and major investment in roads will ensure new potholes are much less likely to appear in the future.
- Renewal of the Affordable Homes Programme in order to support the delivery of hundreds of thousands of affordable homes.
- Progress towards a target of 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.
• Amend planning rules so that infrastructure – roads, schools, GP surgeries – come before people move into new homes. And a £10 billion Single Housing Infrastructure
Fund to help deliver it faster.
- Building safety – Work with industry, housing associations, and individuals to ensure every home is safe and secure and support high-rise residential residents with the removal of unsafe cladding, and continue with our rigorous process of materials testing. }
- Help to Buy Scheme and environmentally-friendly homes.
- Homes for the Future. Innovative design and technology to make housing more affordable, accessible, and suitable for disabled people and an ageing population.
The Green Belt. Will prioritise brownfield development, particularly for the regeneration of cities and towns.
- Training for hundreds of thousands more highly skilled apprentices. Require significant numbers of new UK apprentices for all big new infrastructure projects – new hospitals, new schools, major transport projects.
- A ‘clean-break’ Brexit.
- Investment of a minimum of £50bn in local road and rail schemes in development-starved regions.
- Investment in young people: interest on student loans to be scrapped, which will improve the debt recovery rate, and introduce a new workable apprenticeship scheme.
- Investment of £2.5bn in Fishing and Coastal Communities: with a Clean-Break Brexit to recover control of a 200 mile exclusive economic zone (or the median line), creating the opportunity to regenerate coastal communities with new investment, jobs, and tourism.
- Scrapping of the Apprentice Levy — apprenticeships have collapsed. Improve tax incentives for employers to take on genuine apprentices.