Through our membership of the Construction Products Association, I was invited to a lunch hosted by the CPA at which Grant Shapps MP was the principal guest. He was invited to describe and then discuss the Conservative Party’s future policy on housing, if they win the forthcoming General Election. At the outset, his Party’s aim is to change new housing development from a negative to a positive in the minds of voters. Instead of the current Government’s top down planning diktat, driven through by layers of quangos, which clearly hasn’t worked, the Conservative policy will be to push decision making on planning and development down to local level. However this won’t be at the expense of creating NIMBYism everywhere; rather, by offering financial incentives to local authorities to encourage development, which will direct impact on Council Tax levels, the aim is to create a pressure from Council Tax payers to favour development. This they believe will transform housing development, allowing locally driven development to directly fund tax reductions and/or local amenity improvements. The 2016 Carbon Zero commitment is matched with the current Government’s. The carbon reduction agenda is seen as so important that new ways of funding improvements are also being promoted, including the ‘no (apparent) cost’ Green Deal, involving Tesco, M&S and others. There was a large helping of scepticism served by the host at this point in the lunch! A Conservative Government will not however pursue the abolition of Building Regulations, as had been suggested in the recent past. In discussion, while to some it creates ‘red tape’, to most of the industry Building Regulations and their related Approved Documents do provide a positive driver to improvement and product development. The promotion of energy rated windows was raised with the irony of these proven, energy saving products being taxed at 15% VAT, shortly increasing back to 17.5%, while energy itself is only taxed at 5%. Mr. Shapps recognised the point and replied that ‘it would be a brave Government that raised energy tax!’..the point was made, however! It was good to hear that the sustainability and carbon reduction agenda, driven by regulations and certification, will be continued by whoever wins next May or June; we watch to see if Mr Shapps gets the opportunity to introduce his proposals.
