As former Chancellor Rishi Sunak meets King Charles following his selection as leader of the Conservative Party, the new Prime Minister has been urged to waste little time in addressing key issues and to start making progress in addressing the multiple challenges facing the country.
Upon winning the Tory leadership contest yesterday, Sunak immediately ruled out the possibility of calling an early general election - like the one Boris Johnson called in 2019.
Industry leaders said without an imminent General Election Sunak, who has become the third PM in 2022, needed to hit the ground running in his new role.
RIBA President Simon Allford said: “In these tumultuous times, people and businesses across the country need reassurance and stability – Rishi Sunak must provide this.
“With inflation soaring, energy prices surging, and the housing and climate crises worsening, achieving this will be no mean feat.
“The Government must recognise that in addition to construction being a key driver of growth, buildings are long term assets - critical to our quality of life and wellbeing. Architects and the wider built environment sector stand ready to work with the Government to create a better future for all.
“To do this, the new Government must ensure we have the housing we need; create a well-resourced and efficient planning system; implement a National Retrofit Strategy; and embed a clear and effective building safety regime.
“We will be engaging with the Prime Minister and his Government immediately.”
The call for stability but also progress in key areas was echoed by the Chartered Institute of Building.
Eddie Tuttle, Policy, Research and Public Affairs Director at CIOB, said: “At the time Liz Truss became Prime Minister, we called for consistency and ministers to be appointed for the long term to provide some stability and confidence for those in the construction industry, and this position hasn’t changed. In fact, with so many changes in Government since then, is even more relevant.
“Levelling up, net zero and energy efficiency in existing and new housing remain key issues we’d like the new PM and their cabinet to focus on in relation to their immediate priorities, which will clearly be the economy and cost of living crisis. The levelling up agenda provides significant opportunities for the construction sector, through local job creation and stability, while property retrofit schemes to improve energy efficiency for example, will further boost the sector and go some way to helping residents mitigate rising energy costs.
“Long term infrastructure and capital investment planning is also very much needed to provide a level of assurance and confidence for the industry and its supply chain together with the need to address the current delays in the planning system which are constraining supply.”
The NFB is already putting together its manifesto, which will include some policies sent to Prime Minister Truss, but it believes that the new Prime Minister must put enablement before broad tax cuts.
Richard Beresford, chief executive of the NFB, said: “It has been a very complicated three years for the construction industry and while we congratulate Mr Sunak on his fantastic achievement, we would caution that with less than two years until the next general election, the previous three years which saw modest attempts at business enabling policy reforms need supercharging.
“As representatives of the business community, of course we welcomed tax reforms, but we maintain that the best strategy to increase British productivity is to unlock opportunity through fair regulation and long term thinking.
“Lower taxes are no use if the environment to invest in; for example, infrastructure, is a barrier, or if the wrong taxes are targeted. In the coming weeks, our manifesto, which will be sent to Prime Minister Sunak, will set out how to enable much needed growth, so that the new PM better understands how and why construction is the backbone to sustained productivity growth.”
Stephen Phipson CEO of Make UK, the manufacturers’ organisation said it looked forward to welcoming the new leader of the Conservative party to Downing Street.
“We have had a longstanding constructive relationship with Rishi Sunak during his time as Chancellor where we worked together on support for manufacturers during the pandemic and the important investment initiatives such as Super Deduction,” he continued.
“We will now have a Prime Minister who understands the critical importance of manufacturing, a sector that delivers millions of highly skilled jobs. Britain’s manufacturers are an example of a growing success story, contributing billions of pounds to GDP every year playing a vital part in implementing the Government’s levelling up agenda, creating well-paid jobs where they are most needed around the whole of the country.
“It is now vital that the new Prime Minister moves quickly through the gears to develop a plan that fires up the economy, provides stability and restores confidence. Manufacturing can and must be at the heart of this thinking.”
