Get Britain Building launched at Westminster

Tuesday, 10, Feb 2009 05:09

The biggest coalition in the building industry's history was launched today, to lobby the government to prevent 300,000 job losses in the construction sector.

Get Britain Building is campaigning for the government to support a ten point manifesto to revive the British construction sector, which has been badly hit by the recession and could face hundreds of thousands of redundancies over the next year.

The coalition is spearheaded by British Precast, the Builders Merchants Federation, the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) and the Modern Masonry Alliance.

The campaign was launched at Westminster today, with Mark Prisk MP, Conservative shadow minister for small businesses, Lorley Burt MP, Liberal Democrat shadow minister for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, and Jon Spellar MP, Labour, showing cross party support for the manifesto.

Speaking at the campaign launch, Lorely Burt said:"The construction industry is like a road accident victim, bleeding at the side of the road." Her comments were echoed by Mark Prisk, who called on the political parties to unite and start delivering policies that will help the construction industry. "The time for talking is over" he said, "the industry cannot wait as we need action now."

Richard Diment, director general of the FMB, said: "During the last recession the UK construction industry lost over 500,000 skilled jobs and we simply cannot allow that to happen again.

"The government needs to heed the calls from both politicians and industry and start delivering policies that will help the construction industry survive this recession.

"A skilled work force will be essential to the long term recovery of the UK and we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing skilled jobs to disappear because when they have gone they tend to be gone for good."

The ten point manifesto to Get Britain Building:

1. Ensure responsible lending to prudent borrowers coupled with the reintroduction of mortgage interest tax relief.

2. Cut VAT from 17.5 per cent (15 per cent for the next 13 months) to five per cent for all building repair and maintenance work.

3. Develop and implement a coherent strategy to deal with the UK's existing housing stock both in terms of helping to create more homes and making the UK's existing stock more energy efficient.

4. Set targets for all local authorities to fast track the planning process to release and designate land for social housing.

5. Simplify the planning system.

6. Produce an implementation plan to show the precise timings and location of public spending on schools, hospitals and prisons to ensure that projects are completed in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

7. Introduce a section 106 agreement holiday and then subsequently cap the value of section 106 agreements. Abandon the proposed Community Infrastructure Levy.

8. Reduce the regulatory and fiscal burden.

9. Reform stamp duty so that only higher rates of stamp duty apply to the proportion of the house price which is in the relevant band i.e. a graduated tax like income tax.

10. Reintroduce empty property rate relief.

Get Britain Building is calling on those in the construction industry to write to their local MP in support of the campaign.

Martin Clarke, chief executive of British Precast, said: "It is time for the whole British construction industry to get off its knees, unite together and stop playing the victim - we have a pivotal role in kick-starting the economy by supplying real and sustainable assets in the form of new and improved houses and infrastructure.

"We have the skilled men and women to do the job, and the materials to build with, the people of Britain have the need, the government has the land, the power and can generate the funds - it just needs the willpower. Let's Build!"

aboutproperty spoke to Brian Berry of the FMB earlier this week for his views on what the government should be doing to help the construction industry at this time.