The CIOB Policy Team Newsletter - May 2022
May with the CIOB Policy Team
Welcome to this edition of CIOB’s policy team newsletter.
This edition includes an overview of our application to join the City of London Skills for a Sustainable Skyline Taskforce, our analysis of the Queen's Speech and its implications for the built environment, a brief overview of the elections in Northern Ireland and local elections in England as well as our regional updates.
We would love to hear from you, so please do get in touch at [email protected].
CIOB's Safer Buildings Conference
On 26 May 2022, CIOB hosted its first Safer Buildings Conference. Over the course of the day more than two hundred professionals from across the built environment attended to hear from speakers about the impacts of the Building Safety Act as well as the nature of the new regulatory regime.
Keynote speakers included Dame Judith Hackitt DBE, Chair of the Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, and Peter Baker, Chief Inspector of Buildings at the Health & Safety Executive, who both thanked CIOB and many of the other professional bodies who are “aligned” to the need for culture change to support the implementation of the Building Safety Act.
The policy and public affairs team attended the day and welcomed the opportunity to speak to members about their experiences of the Building Safety Act and hear from them about how it will affect their operations.
CIOB will continue to monitor the progress of the secondary legislation and will use every available opportunity to respond to consultations to ensure that it works for both the users and creators of the built environment.
An article on the full results of the Safer Buildings Conference will be published in June 2022.
Building Safety - What's next for the Building Safety Programme
On 28 April 2022, the Building Safety Bill received Royal Assent becoming an Act and subsequently law. The Building Safety Act (BSA) 2022 as it is now known implements the Building Safety Regulator, to provide oversight of the new system with powers of enforcement and sanctions. A Construction Products Regulator will also have powers to remove dangerous products from the market. Additionally, a New Homes Ombudsman scheme will provide independent redress for new build buyers who have issues with their new home or developers.
While this may seem like the end of the road for a piece of legislation that has taken up a significant amount of time within the Government agenda, there is still much work to do.
If you want to find out about what we think will happen next with the Building Safety Act click here to read our full article.
May 2022 Elections - What do the Results Mean for the Environment
- Northern Ireland
The 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election was held on 5 May 2022. It elected 90 members to the Northern Ireland Assembly. With the dust settling after the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, it is worth considering what the result means for the construction sector. In the run up to the election CIOB published a manifesto outlining our vision for the future of the built environment in Northern Ireland. In it we make a series of policy recommendations under the headings of quality, education and skills, net zero, and procurement.
With Sinn Féin, the DUP, and the Alliance Party accounting for 69 of the 90 seats, here we take a moment to reflect on what each of these parties have said about CIOB’s stated priorities for the built environment in their respective manifestos.
- May 2022 Local Elections
Voters across the UK travelled to the polls on 5 May to elect representatives at a local level for metropolitan, borough and district councils. It is worth noting that not all local authorities in the UK held elections this year so, while the 2022 local elections do not provide a complete picture of the current national political sentiment, they do provide at least snapshot in which to judge the popularity of the main political parties.
Following on from a significant drop in overall national popularity, the Conservative Party saw widespread losses in the wake of continued concerns about the tenureship of Boris Johnson MP. Overall, the Conservatives lost a combined 485 council seats across England, Wales and Scotland which amounted to losing political control of 11 local authorities. When compared with the 235 council seats that the party gained in 2021 this demonstrates the seismic political shift that has taken place in the past 12 months.
The award for the biggest winner this year was shared between the Liberal Democrat Party, who built on their success in the 2019 local elections to gain a further 224 council seats, and the Green Party who gained an impressive 87 seats bringing their overall number of councillors across the UK to 547 on 167 local authorities.
This greater emphasis towards Green Party candidates could signal the move towards a more sustainably focuses political agenda that the industry has been long waiting for.
CIOB's Professional Indemnity Insurance Roundtable
Earlier this year CIOB gathered representatives from across the built environment professional bodies to debate how the construction industry can start to overcome the insurance sector’s reluctance to offer professional indemnity insurance.
Throughout the conversation the representatives debated ways in which both the insurance industry and built environment can work cohesively to address the ongoing professional indemnity insurance crisis. A special thanks to Flaxmans for chairing the debate and RIBA, RTPI, CIBSE, RICS, ABI for attending to discuss this crucial issue.
You can read more about the discussions in the article published in Construction Management here.
Regional Overviews
Scotland
- CIOB invited to join Cross-Party Group on Housing
Following a positive meeting with Graham Simpson, MSP, CIOB Scotland has been invited to join the Scottish Parliament’s Cross-Party Group on Housing. CIOB Scotland looks forward to championing a range of policy issues and highlighting the importance of high-quality housing development across the affordability spectrum.
- Scotland’s Local Elections
Scotland’s local election results saw an increase in the number of councillors from the Scottish National Party (+22), Labour (+20), Liberal Democrats (+20) and the Greens (+16). Mirroring the results from elsewhere in the UK, the Conservative party lost 63 seats across Scotland. All parties that have secured additional seats in the election have recognised the climate emergency in their manifestos and the critical role the built environment must play in reaching net-zero targets. As such, we will drive forward the importance of supporting the construction sector to achieve these targets through long-term, collaborative strategies that will address skills shortages, consumer preference and awareness, and the financial barriers to embracing energy-efficient technologies.
- CIOB Consultation Response Supports Warm Homes Discount (Scotland) Programme Extension
Jocelyne Fleming, CIOB Policy and Public Affairs Officer for Scotland, recently submitted a response to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s consultation on the Warm Home Scotland Discount (WHD) that supports the programme’s implementation in Scotland through to winter 2025/2026. The programme provides direct financial support and relief to vulnerable households facing fuel poverty. CIOB Scotland recognised the need to provide vulnerable households with immediate and ongoing support in paying their energy bills. Our response highlighted our belief that, over the long term, upgrading the energy efficiency of existing homes through repair, maintenance, and improvement work is crucial to addressing the fundamental causes of fuel poverty. We urged Governments to make a long-term commitment to decarbonising our homes by introducing retrofit strategies as a key infrastructure priority. A long-term retrofit strategy will not only support the achievement of net-zero targets but will also create jobs, lower household energy bills, improve the quality and warmth of homes and support the wellbeing of residents while addressing issues of fuel poverty.
Wales
The Local Elections in Wales saw the Welsh Conservatives lose 86 seats across Wales. Going into the election, Monmouthshire was the only local authority under Conservative control, but the election saw Welsh Labour win the most seats there, leading the way for a Labour minority to lead the council.
Welsh Labour saw the biggest gains, winning an additional 86 seats across Wales and control of an additional council. Plaid Cymru also gained control of an additional three councils, taking their total up to four, and independent candidates won 8 seats across Wales. The Green Party won an additional 8 Councillors, and the Liberal Democrats an additional 10.
As across the rest of the UK, it was a difficult loss for Welsh Conservatives. The increased vote share for the left-leaning parties likely reflects the sentiments across the rest of the UK, with Welsh voters wanting to see more done to protect the environment.
Coming up in June
As the legislative agenda ramps up in the wake of the 2022 Queen's Speech, we expect a lot of progress to be made on the flagship bills that formed the substance of the speech.
So far, we have heard the first reading of the Procurement Bill, Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, Schools Bill and UK Infrastructure Bank Bill. All of which will have impacts on the built environment. While we have only been given a confirmed date for the committee stage of the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill (14 June 2022) and Schools Bill (throughout early June), we expect the second reading and committee stage of the remaining bills mentioned to also take place or start in June 2022. CIOB’s policy and public affairs team will be keeping a close eye on these important pieces of legislation to understand what impacts they may have on our members as well as on the construction industry as a whole. Alongside this we expect to gain a few more details on the various pieces of secondary legislation that will underpin the Building Safety Bill, although we do not expect any serious progress to be made on these as the timeline for implementing the estimated 30 pieces of secondary legislation runs until 2024.
Outside of the main legislative programme we will see an important oral question raised in the House of Lords relating to the lessons learned from the Green Homes Grant and need to introduce a national strategy for retrofitting buildings from Baroness Blackstone. Alongside this we will undoubtably hear more about the evolving cost of living crisis, with a number of questions and debates being tabled already to understand what Government can do to help households with increasing costs.
If you made it this far... - Read CIOB's analysis of the Queen's Speech
Tuesday 10 May marked the official State Opening of Parliament, with the Queen’s Speech setting out the Government’s agenda for the 2022-23 session, outlining key policies and proposed legislation. This year, for the first time, the speech was delivered by the Prince of Wales in the Monarch’s absence. During the address, the Prince declared that Government’s priorities are to “grow and strengthen the economy, and help ease the cost of living for families”, as well as to “level up opportunity in all parts of the country, and support more people into work”.
In total, thirty-eight Bills were announced, including legislation to drive sustainable investment in public services and empower local economic growth through regeneration. Five existing Bills were also carried over from the 2021-22 parliamentary session, such as the High-Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill.
CIOB (the Chartered Institute of Building) welcomes the Government’s focus on the built environment in the legislative programme for 2022-23, most notably the alignment of net zero and sustainability priorities, with the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill.
You can read our full analysis of the Queen's Speech here.
Staying in Touch
Thank you for reading this month’s update from the CIOB policy team. We will be back in your inbox next month with more information about what the team is up to, what is going on in Parliament and built environment news to look out for.
All the best,
The CIOB policy team
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