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The UK construction industry needs more than a promise of new projects. The next government can meet its needs by providing a dependable, funded pipeline; making planning and consenting decisions faster and more predictable; expanding competent labour and local delivery capacity; embedding safety, low-carbon design and climate resilience; and giving SMEs and specialist suppliers workable procurement and payment terms.
Those are linked conditions. A planning reform that releases sites will not deliver homes if there are too few trained workers. A large infrastructure budget will not create value if stop-start investment, late payment or unclear product rules drive capable firms out of the market. The practical test is whether policy turns announced ambitions into safe, financeable work that supply chains can deliver.
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What does the construction industry need from the next government?
It needs a credible delivery system rather than isolated initiatives. Five tests provide a useful way to judge any programme:
- Pipeline: Are projects funded over several years, with decisions that reduce uncertainty for contractors, manufacturers and investors?
- Planning: Can the system make timely, evidence-based decisions while protecting communities, nature and heritage?
- People: Are enough competent workers, supervisors, designers and building-control professionals available in the places where work is planned?
- Quality and resilience: Do designs and products meet safety requirements and account for carbon, biodiversity and future climate conditions?
- Commercial conditions: Can SMEs and specialist subcontractors bid, get paid promptly and carry risks they can realistically manage?
These tests combine the Institution of Civil Engineers’ (ICE) priorities for the next UK government with the Construction Leadership Council’s (CLC) sector framework. ICE identifies infrastructure investment, whole-life value, delivery capability, resilience, transport planning, regional connectivity and accountability as priorities in its June 2024 paper. The CLC’s later framework groups action under building safety; people and skills; net zero, biodiversity and the circular economy; and next-generation delivery. ICE’s paper is an industry recommendation, not a statement that every measure is government policy.
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How can a stable project pipeline help construction firms?
Government should publish a multi-year pipeline linked to funding decisions, update it openly and avoid unnecessary starts and stops. This gives firms a basis for recruiting, investing in plant, ordering materials and forming joint ventures. It also lets colleges and training providers plan courses against a visible demand signal.
ICE warns that infrastructure budgets would be effectively cut if investment failed to rise in 2025/26 and later years to cover inflation-related cost increases. Its diagnosis is blunt: “Infrastructure delivery in the UK costs too much and takes too long.” The remedy it proposes is not simply spending more, but judging schemes by social, economic and environmental benefits over their full life, including no-build and nature-based options where those provide better value. ICE sets out that recommendation here.
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The government’s 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy working paper says long-term planning should reduce uncertainty for industry and supply chains. It links infrastructure to growth, housing, clean energy, net zero and public services, and acknowledges that investment volatility creates inefficiency and raises end costs. That is a policy direction, not proof that volatility has already been removed.
A credible pipeline should therefore show more than a list of schemes. For each major programme, government should explain the funding stage, expected consent route, delivery timetable, skills implications, carbon and resilience objectives, and the point at which smaller suppliers can compete. When a project is paused or redesigned, the reason and revised timetable should be published so companies are not left carrying avoidable overheads.
Can planning reform speed delivery without weakening quality?
Planning reform can shorten delays, but only if it is matched by local authority capacity, clear evidence requirements and enough delivery skills. Faster decisions are valuable when they are predictable and lawful; rushed decisions that create redesign, appeals or safety problems simply move delay further down the programme.
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The government’s guide to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill describes goals that include supporting an ambition for 1.5 million homes in England during the Parliament, fast-tracking 150 planning decisions on major economic infrastructure projects, speeding consenting, supporting the Clean Power 2030 target, taking a strategic approach to nature recovery and improving land assembly. These are proposed mechanisms and policy goals; they should not be presented as achieved targets.
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Implementation should focus on the points where applications commonly become uncertain: the information required at submission, the sequence of environmental and technical assessments, statutory consultees’ capacity, and the hand-off from consent to detailed design and building control. National guidance can reduce duplication, but local planning authorities still need planners, ecologists, engineers and enforcement staff. Without that capacity, a statutory fast track may create a queue at another stage.
Housing and infrastructure also compete for land, materials, contractors and utility connections. A planning system that approves homes without coordinating transport, water, energy and schools can leave developers with unbuildable permissions or communities with inadequate services. The 10-year strategy’s emphasis on joined-up investment is therefore important: planning decisions should be tested against the infrastructure needed to make them workable.
CIOB’s account of the programme announced by the government formed after the 2024 election included planning reform, new housing and infrastructure, clean energy, devolution, retrofit, building safety, procurement reform, improved SME access to public contracts and action on late payment. CIOB also noted that some manifesto pledges lacked a clear timetable or implementation detail at the time. That account should be read as a dated summary of announced plans, not as evidence that every commitment has been delivered.
How can government close construction’s skills gap?
Skills policy must be planned alongside the project pipeline. Construction needs new entrants, experienced tradespeople, supervisors, designers, building-control professionals and specialists in retrofit and clean-heat systems. Training places alone are insufficient if employers cannot offer supervised experience or if qualifications do not match the methods being specified.
The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) estimates that about 48,000 additional workers are needed each year to meet construction demand. It also estimates that the annual skills gap could rise from 41,200 to 153,000 when the activity required for government housing and retrofit ambitions is included. The second figure is conditional on that additional activity and should not be treated as a guaranteed forecast. CITB explains the assumptions and measures on its industry picture page.
A separate CITB projection cited by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee says the UK would need to recruit 239,300 extra workers between 2025 and 2029 to deliver government construction commitments. That is a multi-year recruitment projection, not the same measure as an annual skills gap. The different numbers have different scopes and modelling assumptions and should not be added together. The committee report sets out the 2025–29 projection.
The government and CLC have described a £625 million construction-skills investment intended to recruit or train 60,000 additional workers by 2028–29 and establish 10 Technical Excellence Colleges. Those targets indicate the scale of the response, but funding and announced places do not demonstrate that courses are filled, completed or located where projects need workers. Progress reporting should show enrolment, completion, retention, occupational mix and regional distribution.
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Housing construction and retrofit draw on overlapping capacity. The government response to the Environmental Audit Committee stresses the need for a competent supply chain for fabric and clean-heat work in existing-home retrofit and new housing. Parliamentary evidence also records contractor uncertainty around less familiar bio-based materials and identifies retrofit and digital skills as needs. The government response is available here.
A practical workforce plan would include funded apprenticeships and conversion routes; paid site placements; recognition of prior experience; continuing professional development for designers and building-control staff; and short courses for heat pumps, insulation, airtightness, digital coordination and modern methods of construction. It should also address the capacity of small firms to release staff for training. Local skills plans need to be tied to actual housing, infrastructure and retrofit programmes rather than treated as separate education exercises.
What does safe, low-carbon and resilient delivery require?
Safety, carbon, nature and resilience should be requirements at the point a project is chosen and designed, not checks added immediately before construction. This approach reduces redesign and makes trade-offs visible when they can still be changed.
The CLC treats building safety as an ongoing sector priority, including work with the Building Safety Regulator on gateway processes and construction-product regulation. The government’s construction-products reform white paper discusses competence, regulation and training. The policy implication is straightforward: manufacturers, specifiers, installers and inspectors need reliable information about product performance, installation limits and responsibility for decisions. The final shape and status of reforms should be checked against current legislation and guidance rather than assumed from a consultation document.
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Competence is especially important in retrofit. A measure that performs well on paper can create damp, overheating, fire or indoor-air-quality problems if the building is poorly assessed or the installation is defective. Government programmes should require appropriate surveying, design, installation and handover, with records that allow defects to be traced and corrected. Procurement that rewards the lowest initial price without funding competent design and aftercare can undermine the stated energy objective.
ICE’s recommendations widen the climate question beyond operational or embodied carbon. It calls for decarbonisation, stronger climate adaptation and resilience, and better reporting by infrastructure owners and operators. It also asks decision-makers to consider lifetime social, environmental and economic benefits, including nature-based and no-build alternatives. That lifetime-value framing comes from ICE; it should not be presented as a settled consensus measure used uniformly across all projects.
In practice, business cases should disclose whole-life carbon assumptions, biodiversity effects, flood and heat exposure, maintenance needs and the consequences of failure. Design reviews should ask whether a smaller intervention, reuse of an existing asset or a nature-based solution could meet the need with less material and lower long-term risk. Where a new asset is necessary, adaptation allowances and monitoring responsibilities should be explicit.
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How can procurement and payment help SMEs and the wider supply chain?
Public procurement should make it possible for capable smaller firms to participate without taking on risks or administrative costs designed for much larger contractors. CIOB’s summary of the 2024 programme included improved SME access to public contracts, procurement reform and action on late payment. Turning those commitments into results requires transparent opportunities, proportionate qualification requirements and contracts that allocate risks to the party best able to control them.
Government departments and major clients can publish forward procurement notices early, divide suitable work into lots, use consistent digital information requirements and explain evaluation decisions. Frameworks should not become closed clubs in which the same suppliers receive every opportunity. Smaller firms also need realistic mobilisation periods, clear design responsibility and payment terms that flow through the tiers of the supply chain.
Late payment is not merely an accounting inconvenience. A subcontractor may have paid wages, materials and tax weeks before receiving certified payment; a delay can restrict its ability to hire, train or bid for the next project. Prompt-payment clauses, transparent payment notices, rapid adjudication where appropriate and meaningful reporting of payment performance can improve cash-flow confidence. They should be accompanied by fair treatment of legitimate disputes, so payment systems do not encourage unsafe or incomplete work.
Procurement should reward quality and whole-life value rather than treating the lowest tender as the default definition of value. Evaluation can consider competence, maintainability, carbon, social value and resilience when those criteria are relevant and measurable. Standardised requirements reduce duplicated bid costs, while early contractor involvement can expose buildability and supply-chain constraints before a price is fixed.
How should progress be measured?
A government can show whether it is meeting industry needs by publishing a small, consistent dashboard rather than relying on announcements. The measures should cover the entire delivery chain:
| Test | Useful evidence |
|---|---|
| Pipeline certainty | Funded projects, changes to delivery dates, cancellations and the time between announcement, consent and start on site. |
| Planning capacity | Decision times, appeal and judicial-review outcomes, application completeness, and staffing in planning and specialist-consultee teams. |
| Workforce | Starts and completions, retention, vacancies, occupational mix, regional distribution and participation by SMEs. |
| Safety and competence | Gateway performance, product traceability, enforcement findings, defect rectification and continuing-professional-development participation. |
| Net zero and resilience | Whole-life carbon, biodiversity outcomes, adaptation measures, energy performance and asset-condition reporting. |
| Commercial health | Payment times, disputed invoices, insolvencies, SME win rates and the share of work delivered through viable local supply chains. |
These indicators should be published with geography and definitions. For example, ONS construction employment statistics distinguish employees from self-employment and cover Great Britain, while a housing target in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill guide is specific to England. Mixing those scopes can make a programme appear more or less successful than it is.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What should the next government do first?
- Give the pipeline a funding baseline. Publish a rolling list of major projects, the money available, decision gates and the assumptions behind cost updates. Explain changes instead of allowing uncertainty to spread through the supply chain.
- Pair planning reform with capacity funding. Set service standards and clear information requirements, but also fund planners, technical consultees and building-control professionals so faster routes are usable.
- Join workforce planning to local programmes. Map the trades and professional roles required for housing, infrastructure and retrofit, then align colleges, apprenticeships and employer placements with those locations and dates.
- Make competence and product information enforceable. Clarify responsibilities across design, manufacture, installation and inspection, and give the Building Safety Regulator and market-surveillance bodies the resources to act.
- Procure for whole-life value. Require proportionate consideration of carbon, nature, maintenance and climate risk, alongside cost and delivery time. Keep no-build, reuse and nature-based options in the business-case process.
- Protect supply-chain cash flow. Improve SME access to public work, monitor payment performance through the tiers and prevent contracts from transferring uncontrollable risks to the smallest firms.
None of these actions substitutes for the others. A large order book without skills can increase delay and poor quality; skills investment without a dependable pipeline can fail to retain trainees; and planning speed without safety and resilience can create liabilities that last for decades.
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What would success look like for construction?
Success would be visible in decisions and delivery, not only in policy documents. Contractors would be able to see a credible sequence of work, price materials and labour against realistic dates, and invest in training with confidence. Planning authorities would have the capacity to make timely decisions that survive scrutiny. Clients would select competent teams and products, pay the supply chain fairly and account for whole-life outcomes.
The evidence already shows the scale of the task. CLC states that construction contributes 8% of UK GDP and employs 8% of the UK workforce, or 2.9 million people, on its stated basis. CITB’s estimates point to substantial additional labour requirements, while ONS data show an industry facing both changing order patterns and higher prices. CLC’s review and 2026 plan provide the sector context.
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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →The next government can therefore meet construction’s needs by treating the sector as delivery infrastructure for national goals, not simply as a contractor available when a policy is announced. Stable funding, capable institutions, a trained workforce, safe products, resilient design and fair commercial rules are the conditions that turn housing, transport, energy and retrofit ambitions into assets people can use and maintain.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the different construction workforce estimates directly comparable?
No. The estimate of about 48,000 additional workers a year describes overall demand, the possible rise from 41,200 to 153,000 depends on adding housing and retrofit activity, and the 239,300 figure covers recruitment projected for 2025–29. They use different periods and assumptions, so they should be reported separately rather than combined.
Does the Planning and Infrastructure Bill apply across the whole UK?
The housing ambition and planning mechanisms described in the government guide are framed around England. Infrastructure strategy can have a UK-wide context, but planning, housing delivery and devolved responsibilities differ across the nations; a national headline should not be treated as a uniform rule everywhere.
Do ONS construction employment figures include self-employed workers?
ONS distinguishes employees from self-employment in its Great Britain construction statistics. Anyone using employment numbers to plan training or compare regions should check which measure is being used rather than assuming that an employee count represents the entire construction workforce.
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Small firms often pay wages and suppliers before receiving certified sums from a main contractor or client. Persistent delays can restrict hiring, training and participation in future tenders, so payment performance affects the capacity and resilience of the whole delivery chain.
