Who is the political party for construction?

You can’t escape the General Election so at CEWales we decided to embrace it. We’ve issued a series of questions to the four main parties in Wales to ask them about their specific policies around construction. We have had no answers yet, but our plan is to dig through their manifestos, scour the news headlines and then do some analysis against what they say, based on what we think might be feasible and set that against what you indicate is required and achievable. But as we write the newsletter the headlines are focussing on the UK Labour parties pledge to tackle Britain’s housing crisis by “building for the many”, setting aside £75bn over five years to fund the most dramatic increase in council home construction since the second world war. This was a piece we saw in the Guardian on Thursday morning.

“As he launches Labour’s manifesto, Jeremy Corbyn will pledge that by the end of its first term in office, a Labour government would build 100,000 council houses a year, and 50,000 social homes through housing associations – all of them to high environmental standards. Only 6,287 council homes were built in 2018-19. The rapid increase would be paid for using half of the £150bn “social transformation fund” recently announced by the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, which will be funded through government borrowing.”

They argument will herald a new era of council housing. But the thing is, this is just political talk? What is really going to happen? The construction media will be undertaking similar editorial plans over the next few weeks – Building magazine is running a survey for example. We’d urge you to get involved. Political leaders need to know what our industry wants – because if their claims about building hospitals, houses and transport infrastructure are going to actually amount to anything it is going to be CEWales stakeholders doing the delivery. Don’t hold back – tell us what you think, and we will take your arguments to the decision makers we can influence and raise the debate with the media too.