The new Labour government has set housing and construction firmly at the heart of its plans to kickstart the economy. How can timber help put UK construction back on track?
New Chancellor Rachel Reeves MP used her first major speech to re-implement mandatory housebuilding targets, and commit to building 1.5 million homes in England over the next five years, with a focus on brownfield and grey belt land. That’s 300,000 homes a year – an ambitious figure that hasn’t been achieved since the 1950s.
The Government hopes that its plans will appeal to the private sector, encouraging billions of pounds of investment by transforming the planning system and making rapid decisions on national infrastructure projects.
The timber industry has welcomed these plans, but has also warned that it’s not enough just to build more houses – they need to also be sustainable to help the UK meet its net zero targets.
Andrew Carpenter, CEO of the Structural Timber Association, says: “This is a unique opportunity to revolutionise the way we build our homes in the UK. Adopting more sustainable construction methods, such as structural timber, offers a speedy and clean approach to meeting current and future housing demands.
“We urge the new government to renew the commitment to increasing the use of timber that was established with the Timber in Construction Policy Roadmap, published by DEFRA in December last year. It’s imperative that the progress we have already made is not lost.”
Unlocking sustainable timber construction
The timber industry has created the Timber in Construction manifesto, which calls on the Government to unlock a new wave of sustainable timber construction.
Published by the Confederation of Timber Industries (CTI), an alliance of timber associations, including TDUK, it outlines the quick policy wins that could help support the rapid growth of a low-carbon built environment.
CTI Chair Alex Goodfellow explains: “Over the past five years, there has been some incredible work by our colleagues to lay the groundwork for a switch to more sustainable forms of construction.
“The construction industry is ahead of the regulation, with existing capacity and expertise to rapidly scale up low-carbon, high-quality and safe use of timber in construction – as has long been recommended by the Climate Change Committee – within the right policy framework.”
The manifesto outlines several key policies that could be implemented quickly to help level up sustainable construction across the whole of the UK. These are:
- Minimise embodied carbon emissions in construction: Introduce Part Z to the Building Regulations to ensure embodied carbon is assessed on all projects
- Minimise operational carbon emissions from buildings: By adopting the net zero carbon buildings standard.
- Use government procurement to boost low-carbon construction: Make all new government buildings measure and reduce their whole-life carbon, and in UK schools.
- Reduce carbon emissions from existing buildings: as part of a plan to retrofit the UK’s 28 million existing homes.
- Boost planning to grow cities for people: Seek to encourage density through planning reform in partnership with local councils, including hiring more planning officers.
- Urban tree planting to bring nature to cities: Create a national urbal tree strategy to make them part of the living fabric of our cities.
- VAT exemption on retrofit and low-carbon buildings: Remove the financial barriers to retrofit by matching the zero-rated newbuild VAT status in the RMI market.
Show timber in action
The timber manifesto also includes examples of how timber is prepared to provide solutions to today’s housing and climate crises.
These includes long-standing timber frame solutions and approaches such as Optoppen (increasing the useable space in a building through lightweight timber roof extensions), adding timber floors to existing buildings, new sustainable timber developments like the Phoenix in Lewes, award-winning social housing like Goldsmith Street, and mass timber solutions for residential mid-rise, like the New Model Building.
Get the message to MPs
TDUK is engaging with the new government from day one and is strongly urging others to do the same. The CTI has issued easy-to-follow guidance on finding and contacting your local MP, which you can find at the TDUK website.
TDUK would encourage all our members – and anyone interested in a sustainable future – to take this opportunity to contact their local MP and tell them about the Timber in Construction Manifesto, which can be downloaded from www.timberdevelopment.uk.
* This article was first published in Supplying Timber issue 6
