The CIOB has launched a call for evidence into skills, materials and new technology in the housing sector.
Begun in April, the work is part of a wider coalition – the National Housing Taskforce – which has been convened by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Housing and Planning.
The new APPG Taskforce aims to look at all areas of housing, tackling the UK’s housing crisis in 12 parallel work streams. Each work stream is being led by a relevant organisation which will submit recommendations to the Taskforce later in the year.
Among the property sector organisations involved are the Royal Town Planning Institute, Empty Homes, the G15 grouping of London’s largest housing associations, the National Community Land Trust Network and the RIBA.
The CIOB’s work stream is charged with addressing the main issues in the construction labour market, including availability, productivity and diversity.
Additionally, it will look at materials and new technology, primarily offsite manufacture and modern methods of construction (MMC), including how they link to skills.
The call for evidence is inviting submissions from industry, government, education establishments, professionals and other interested stakeholders that shed light on addressing the skills gap that currently exists across the sector.
The CIOB also wants to hear about opportunities for improving productivity and driving down costs through the use of construction techniques such as offsite manufacture. Of particular interest are successful initiatives both for skills and technology that are operating at scale, or could be scaled up.
David Hawkes, CIOB policy manager, said: “At its most basic level, what this work stream boils down to is capacity. Studies have shown the housing sector needs 120,000 new employees just to meet the required annual level of homes the UK needs. At the same time, house builders say they cannot build more than 150,000 homes per year via conventional means.
“What this suggests to us is that something needs to fundamentally change if we are to properly address the housing crisis. We need more people working more productively and we have to work out how best to utilise and implement new technologies, materials and processes.”
Evidence needs to be submitted by 17:00 on 9 September 2016. Full details and guidelines on submission can be found here.
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