Increase in Infrastructure Investment

As part of last week’s Autumn Budget, the Government has amended its fiscal rules to enable £100 billion to be spent on capital projects over the next five years. Promising to ‘invest, invest, invest’ to ‘rebuild Britain’ and drive economic growth, the Government has committed to deliver the following:

• Rail ‐ HS2 trains to run to Euston, East West Rail between Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge, and the Transpennine Route Upgrade between York and Manchester.
• Roads ‐ Key schemes, including dualling sections of the A47 between East Anglia and the North and the A57 between Sheffield and Greater Manchester, plus an additional £500 million to fix potholes across England.
• Schools ‐ £6.7 billion in capital spending for schools in 2025/26, including £1.4 billion for the School Rebuilding Programme to rebuild over 500 schools.
• Hospitals ‐ A £3.1 billion increase in the capital budget, including more than £1 billion to tackle RAAC and the backlog of maintenance, repairs and upgrades across the NHS estate.
• Housing ‐ An additional £500 million for the Affordable Homes Programme to help build up to 5,000 affordable homes, £1 billion to remediate unsafe social housing, and £3 billion in the form of housing guarantee schemes to support SMEs delivering new homes.
• Planning ‐ The recruitment of an additional 300 planners to boost local authority capacity as part of wider planning reform.

Build UK is calling for the programme of work to get underway quickly, and Chief Executive Suzannah Nichol met with Gareth Davies, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Business and Trade, and Varun Chandra, Special Advisor to the Prime Minister, this week to discuss the Government’s 10‐year infrastructure strategy, which will be published alongside the Spending Review next spring.

Contract Terms Guidance

The CLC has published a statement calling on the industry and its advisors to use standard forms of contract with no amendments ‘except where necessary in the context of project‐specific risks’. Highlighting that risk transfer through the supply chain should be ‘proportionate’, the statement supports Build UK’s recommendation on contract terms, which identifies six onerous terms that should not be used.

Housebuilding Report

The Government has responded to the Competition and Markets Authority’s recommendations for the housebuilding market, acknowledging that reform is essential to ensure the housebuilding market delivers homes at the scale, pace and affordability the country needs.

Small Business Forum

Build UK Chair Julie White has been appointed to the Government’s Small Business Growth Forum, which met for the first time earlier this week. Replacing the Small Business Council, the new Forum brings together SME business leaders from across the UK to provide the Government with insight into the challenges facing small businesses, and Julie highlighted Build UK’s 5 Ps to Power Up Construction.

First Tier Tribunal decision regarding roof gardens in relation to the definition of a Higher-Risk Building

MHCLG has issued the statement below which is now included on its webpage Guidance on the criteria for being a higher-risk building – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Building Safety Regulator are currently considering the views expressed by the Tribunal in the recent First Tier Tribunal decision that roof gardens should be classified as a storey when determining whether a building meets the height and storey criteria under the Higher-Risk Buildings (Descriptions and Supplementary Provisions) Regulations 2023. 

 In the meantime, the sector and regulatory bodies should continue to refer to existing government guidance. We recognise that the views expressed by the Tribunal may have created some uncertainty within the sector. It is important to note the Tribunal itself acknowledged, it was not within its jurisdiction to formally determine whether the building being considered was a higher-risk building.