28th August 2024 | News, Blog Posts
As the dust settles following the Labour Party’s election to Government in the predicted but nonetheless unprecedented landslide victory at the July 2024 election, we now wait and see what the effect of this new Government will be on the Construction Industry.
What we know already is that the central tenet of their manifesto is to stimulate sustained growth in the UK Economy as the mechanism to reduce Government debt as a percentage of GDP. This will be a challenge as many headwinds exist in the UK and Global Economies to act against the Government’s efforts. Notwithstanding this, the vote share at the election clearly demonstrated that the country wanted a change, so after 14 years in opposition Labour have their time to prove what they can achieve.
The specific question for John Perkins Construction as an SME Contractor in the South West of England and Wales is how will this governmental change affect our market and does it alter the balance of the opportunities and threats that we face. On the positive side, a central pillar of the Labour Government’s plan for growth is focused specifically on construction with the slogan “get Britain building again” at its heart.
The new government have outlined their plans to tackle the ever-present housing crisis and to deliver 370,000 homes a year, as well as the infrastructure development needed to support these new homes with ‘major planning reform’. They plan to do this by enforcing mandatory local housing targets, reintroducing strategic planning across local boundaries, and reforming compulsory purchase rules to facilitate land assembly and site delivery.
Of more direct importance to John Perkins Construction and our marketplace is the recognition that a key tool in any Government’s armoury to drive economic growth is Public Sector investment. During campaigning, in the lead up to the election, hardly an hour went by without commitments to increase spending in Health, Defence, Education, and Housing giving confidence to even cynical business leaders that Public Sector should be a resilient market to be operating in.
At John Perkins Construction we have worked hard to build collaborative and trusted relationships in Public Sector market places for over 12 years, in reality since the 2008 / 2009 financial crash. During the 12-14 years since then we have seen steady growth in both value and spread of our Public Sector contracts across the South West and Wales.
Through lessons learnt over that time we have to honed our skills working in complicated live sites, satisfying the sometimes onerous Public Sector systems and we understand the market never stands still, so we have to continue to learn and develop the skills not only of the business but most importantly of our team. To this end we have worked hard over the past few years to improve communication within the business, take down silo working, promote internal collaboration and support the attainment of professional development qualifications. All of this feeds into our Business Resilience agenda as we know we need to be fit as a business to survive, adapt and most importantly prosper.
As with all new Governments, time will tell how successful Labour will be in their endeavours, they certainly have the mandate and majority to deliver change. We will need to be observant of developments in the marketplace and flexible in how we take advantage of them, all the time using the support offered by our professional partners such as @NFB and @BSG to name but two.
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