The industry is waiting for clarification from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on the future of the industry-government Construction Leadership Council, after BIS postponed the June meeting via an email last week.
It’s thought that BIS’s decision to pause proceedings is linked to the department’s need to find savings as part of chancellor George Osborne’s austerity drive – £4.5bn of public spending cuts were announced this week.
Of that total, BIS is expected to find £450m in savings from its £18bn budget, although it has fared better than DCLG, which must cut £230m from a £1.376bn budget – amounting to 16.7%.
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Alasdair Reisner, chief executive of the Civil Engineering Contractors Association and a member of the CLC’s Delivery Group, said that the email was not wholly unexpected.
Alasdair Reisner: no surprise
He said: “It wasn’t a huge surprise as we do have a change of government. With a new secretary of state and the requirement to make cost savings from non-protected departments, they’re looking at what they can do and how they can find their way.
“But we don’t want this to be a long-lasting spasm where we don’t know what the industry’s relationship with government is, we want there to be some certainty around that and we’re fairly confident there will be.”
The CLC was formerly co-chaired by business secretary Vince Cable; the views of his successor, Sajid Javid, on the CLC or construction’s industrial strategy Construction 2025 are not known.
At the same time, it’s been announced that the government’s chief construction adviser Peter Hansford will not seek a further term when his contract expires in November.
Reisner said: “We’re very clear that we believe the role should be sustained, just as we think the CLC is an effective body and should remain.
“I think this is just about the new government coming in, and I don’t think there’s any more to it than that.”
