22 Nov 2007 - Our view on meeting the new house building target.

The review considers the challenges facing the housebuilding industry in meeting the Government’s new house building target, along with its overarching ambition to create sustainable communities.

We believe the Callcutt Review provides an ideal opportunity for the construction sector to comprehend the role it already plays in delivering successful communities. The Review also offers the potential to lay the foundations for housing to contribute towards the Government’s overall strategy of delivering sustainable and mixed communities, and in particular the delivery of the Sustainable Communities Plan. 

We consider our remit to be complementary to the Callcutt Review. Its formation was one of the principal recommendations of the Egan Review published in 2004. This sought to identify the skills that were essential to creating and maintaining sustainable communities, and gave us the clear mandate to deliver the skills and knowledge required by professionals and communities to create better places.

Successful development requires the range of different sustainable communities professions to have sufficient numbers and the skills to build successful communities. We have a specific focus on enhancing the generic skills, knowledge and behaviours considered essential for ensuring the professions maximised their contribution to sustainable communities. These generic skills include project and programme management, leadership and partnership working.

Skills gaps and labour shortages

We are keen to establish the scale of the challenge facing professions and to that end have commissioned research to identify what information currently exists. This research will be published shortly but some of the initial findings echo what has been highlighted in various professional journals in recent years. We currently face a major challenge of attracting and retaining suitably trained and qualified staff to meet current and future demand.

Specifically, analysis of the age profile within certain built environment professions such as surveying and engineering indicates an ageing workforce. The average age of Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) members is between 35 and 45 years old, with around 35% of members aged over 50.  More worryingly, in 2004 the average age for engineers was over 55.

It is also important to recognise the vital contribution of non-built environment professions to creating new homes within communities. In particular, planning professionals are needed in sufficient numbers and with sufficient skills to enable site identification and the necessary approval processes. Planning is a particular concern: during the 1980s and 1990s the perception of the profession suffered and, as a consequence, it slipped down the list of desirable careers. Evidence from the Local Authority Employers’ Organisation in 2005 found that planners are second only to social workers as the most difficult staff to recruit and retain.

We need to attract new recruits into each of these professions or there will be capacity issues in terms of delivery of Government targets. While some steps have already been taken to improve this situation, the Callcutt Review provides an ideal opportunity to showcase the opportunities within the various constituent built environment professions. To encourage more people into these professions we are developing a large scale careers campaign to be launched in June. Further resources to target the built environment professions would be welcomed.

While in some professional institutions such as the Royal Town Planning Institute there has been recognition of the vital contribution of generic skills, in others such as engineering the focus of ongoing professional development remains predominantly focused on technical skills. Increasing focus is needed with the built environment professions on generic skills to ensure that we have the skilled people to build sustainable communities.

Construction as a tool for regenerating communities

The emphasis of many regeneration programmes over the last 25 years has been to correct the planning, design and construction problems of earlier times. The problems of today have been exacerbated by the increasing concentration of the less economically able in communities and neighbourhoods experiencing multiple deprivation. The principal lesson from successive government intervention programmes has been that a bricks and mortar approach can only be part of the solution.

The construction sector has a major role to play in transforming the most deprived neighbourhoods as well as in providing the new homes on green or brownfield sites in the growth areas. The Review is therefore urged to look beyond the target numbers towards the impact it can have on delivering sustainable communities across the country. It is important to ensure that training programmes for local people are integrated into housing development projects wherever possible. It should be recognised that the upfront costs associated with such training schemes are  often high compared to most other training programmes, however over the long run they can be justified.

The traditional approach to house building in most cases has involved an exit from the project on completion of the development. While this model will remain, there are an increasing number of large scale projects where commitment to long term stewardship by the developer is part of the selection process. The distinction between developer and manager of housing is becoming more blurred, as the sector diversifies with new types of developer emerging and some existing contractors extending their role and their length of involvement in projects. The Review should therefore recognise the changing nature of some of the housing providers, which represents a further contribution to the overall sustainable communities agenda.

Housebuilding and community cohesion

The Government has recognised that there is no single housing market in England. While demand outstrips supply in the south east and affordability is an increasing issue, different conditions prevail in many parts of the north and midlands where demand is weaker and market failure exists. This led to the introduction of the Housing Market Renewal Programme, which seeks to stabilise housing markets and transform areas through a series of housing and non-housing regeneration interventions that when combined will improve the physical fabric of neighbourhoods and reduce the physical, social and economic disadvantage of the communities.

A sustainable community is one that is strong and cohesive and where there are positive relationships across neighbourhoods. However, little practical information exists to ensure community cohesion issues are built in at the start of housing and development projects, which leads to reacting to problems after they have occurred. As part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), we are seeking resources to develop and roll out a national programme for those working in the sustainable communities sector to promote improved awareness and practice of community cohesion issues.

Major construction programmes involving new house building, refurbishment and demolition provide the opportunity to make long-term procurement arrangements. They also offer the housebuilding sector the prospect of contributing to community cohesion. There are a number of examples of developers and Registered Social Landlords who actively seek to recruit from minority communities, many of whom have traditionally been reluctant to view construction and the built environment as a desirable career path. In addition to promoting a more diverse workforce it will also help to meet the projected workforce requirements of the sector.

Delivering low carbon communities

The Government has set the target of creating carbon neutral homes by 2016. This presents a significant challenge to housebuilders and the construction sector as a whole. Housing will be a key ingredient of low carbon communities and it is vital that all professionals develop the new skills that will be required to meet this challenge. We are currently developing a programme to provide these skills and the objective is not to target specialists with detailed technical information but rather those practitioners and those in leadership positions who need to understand what practical steps they can take to promote low carbon developments. We recognise that there will be cost implications for such a programme through the CSR but consider that this should be highlighted in the Review.

Good house building

One of the principal ambitions of the Review is to seek ways of ensuring that the number of homes built rises to meet the current and anticipated levels of demand. This is an important target but we would urge for equal consideration to be given to the requirement to create attractive and sustainable communities. While there are numerous examples of exemplary new communities and developments created over recent years the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment’s recent national review of the design quality of new building identified improvement is still required.