Construction: The mood music is good, the challenges immense

If the Government wants to know how its talk of planning reforms and housebuilding is impacting the construction sector it should've been at the Gloucestershire Constructing Excellence conference.

Dear readers,

Welcome to your latest edition of Raikes - a full-on members’ edition with a construction theme. We would love to have kept the paywall off to share all the stories here, but have to make what we do sustainable.

What we do - original journalism for and about Gloucestershire on a platform free of click bait and adverts and recyled press release - costs money, and this is quite simply how we make it pay.

For just £2.30 a week you can read all our paywalled stories, all our archive and hopefully also feel very pleased with yourself that you are supporting a community interest company dedicated to delivering real journalism about the county. If you think that sort of thing is important, then please do join our growing band of supporters.

Pitch over.

The main story below is a report on the recent Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire conference staged at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business School in Oxstalls.

Why was this important?

Our new Government has talked a lot in its first few weeks in power about how it intends to reform planning to drive housebuilding. So much is connected to it, not just more homes to help fix our broken housing market and drive down prices, but better health outcomes, more reasons to be aspiration (many may finally be able to afford their own homes!), more jobs and more money in the economy for everyone - not least for Government to help replenish the nation’s coffers.

Successfully getting us building more depends on so many factors, but mostly on the construction sector itself. Which is why Raikes was chuffed to be able to attend and listen in at the recent Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire conference.

By way of an appetiser to the main read we include another Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire story, this time about Newland Homes. If any story tells of the impact on business and progress of the ‘broken planning system’ it is this one.

Again, I’m afraid this one is paywalled too! But you’ll get the gist.

Raikes is looking for more sponsors to join its current stable. If you are interested, please email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.

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Your briefing notes 

🎳 🏆 Do you have what it takes to become the business community’s champion bowler? Does your workplace have a team to take on all-comers? Willans, the Cheltenham headquartered solicitors - and one of the Founding Partners of Raikes, is calling on you - and anyone who just fancies taking part - to sign up for its fun bowling and networking event at Hollywood Bowl, Cheltenham, on Wednesday 25 September. You can enter teams of eight or four and win or lose, all money goes to Cheltenham Open Door, the firm’s charity of the year for 2024-25. First established in 1982, Cheltenham Open Door aims to relieve poverty, hardship and social or emotional distress by supporting vulnerable, disadvantaged and lonely people through access to food, friendship, advice and support.  Find out more here. 

🏗️ In an edition themed around construction on a platform dedicated to education and training as well as business, it’s only fitting the briefing notes also contain a story that covers off both. You will have seen it talked up and talked about elsewhere, but Gloucestershire College (another of our Founding Partners) is due to stage an official opening of its new construction training campus in Cheltenham on Thursday, September 26. Principal Matt Burgess and Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire’s CEO, Kevin Harris, are due to speak (Harris is also featured in the main story below). It’s invitation only, but fear not – we’ll be running a report on it post event here on Raikes.  

🏆 Those of you who read regularly about Gloucestershire’s business community will be familiar with the name Ian Mean, Business West’s current leader for the county, former editor of our local newspapers and of the regional Western Daily Press. He has a knack of getting his copy published by anyone with a website and space to fill, but that’s also because with his connections and insight is often well worth a read. We succumbed with this blog, in which he chats to the leader of Tewkesbury Borough Council about his patch being in the top five fastest growing areas in the UK. You can read it in our expert insight channel here. 

🚗⛽ Electric vehicles; we’re all being led towards ownership eventually, but what about charging? What about range? In somewhere like the Forest of Dean where public transport can leave a lot to be desired and a car a necessity, charging will become vital. Which is why the district council has announced it has Government grant money available to fund the costs of installing up to 40 EV charging sockets at workplaces across its patch. Apparently, the funds can go towards buying and installing EV charging points at businesses. You need to apply before March 2025. Telephone council on 01594 810000. 

🏆 We flagged this on Monday’s edition, too, but as a media partner we just can’t help ourselves. This is your chance to vote for who you think should walk away a winner from the fortcoming Gloucester BID Believe in Gloucester Awards. The shortlist of businesses, charities and individuals for each of the 13 awards has been chosen, all you have to do is follow the link, make your choices, confirm your email address so you can’t use it to vote multiple times, and you can relax! Cast your vote here.  

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TOP 100: Housebuilder lays bare the impact of the ‘broken planning system’

If you wanted to read a single story in our Top 100 series that underlined the impact on business of our nation’s failure to address housebuilding it is this one, based on the latest financial figures from Newland Homes.

Barely a week has gone by since our new Government was elected that construction and planning have not been mentioned, with deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, letting all of us know that reform of the planning system is coming and 300,000 new homes a year the target.

It is music to the ears of many house builders, who have been openly calling for reform till they are blue in the face.

Under intense pressure especially are those small to medium-sized housebuilders which do not have the financial muscle to acquire large land banks and endure lengthy journeys through the planning process.

The just-published annual results of Gloucestershire-based Newland Homes, one of our most high profile small to medium-sized housebuilders, speaks volumes about those pressures and the need for the much trumpeted reforms. 

We’ve simply lifted the quotes directly from the Barnwood-based firm’s just-published annual report and placed them below, a perfect scene-setter ahead of the main story further down this edition, a report on the recent Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire annual conference.

Turnover is down, profit is down and it lays the blame firmly at the foot of “the vagaries and inadequacy of the planning process”.

You can read the rest of the story here in our reports and deal channel. We paywall almost all the stories in our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series, which follows the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms to help make this community interest company sustainable.

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* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne, our sponsors Hartpury University and Hartpury College, our Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.

If you upgrade to paid, you’ll be part of this community interest company too. In an era when local journalism is all but gone, we are dedicated to delivering quality journalism for Gloucestershire, to championing the county, in particular its businesses, charities, education and training providers, to defending it, challenging those who need to be held to account and to helping create an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you will be able to see past the paywalls on our second and third email editions of the week, that lock all our archive after two weeks and lock our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire, the series that follows the financial fortunes of our biggest firms by turnover. You will be able to comment on our stories too. You’ll be helping make this CIC sustainable. Please do join us.

You can sign up for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once.

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Construction: “The mood music is good” - the challenges immense

If the Government wants to know how its talk of planning reforms and housebuilding targets is impacting the construction sector it should've been at the Gloucestershire Constructing Excellence conference.

By Andrew Merrell

Unlike a press conference or media release, businesses have different messages when they are talking to companies they work with every single day, that understand the challenges - and construction is no different. 

That was what made Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire’s recent annual gathering so fascinating. It was a chance to hear how all the talk from Keir Starmer’s government really was impacting a sector it seems determined to place front and centre of its plans. 

Reform of planning and a determination to deliver 300,000 new homes a year are the two standout points made by deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, and it looks like the impact on the construction centre could be seismic.

You would suspect it has been both music to the ears of many as well as giving the sector plenty to think about. But just what are they thinking? What did those gathering at the conference at the University of Gloucestershire’s Business School at Oxstalls have to say about it all? 

Labour’s pending reforms didn’t shape the entire agenda, but they were certainly a big part of the mood music as three panels convened in succession to discuss a broad range of topics.  

In panel one, Jonathan White, of Quattro Design Architects and chairman of Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire, put the questions to Martin Chandler of SF Planning, Kevin Harris, of Tandem Consultancy and ceo of Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire, and Kingsley Clarke, of SCF (Southern Construction Framework) and chairman of Constructing Excellence South West.

Sam Minett-Smith, EHS risk and opportunity manager at Speller Metcalfe chaired panel two and panel three, with the second line-up of experts consisting of Toby Coombes, director of Coombes Everitt Architects and Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire, Jess Munn, framework partnership manager at Speller Metcalfe, Katie Pickering, associate at Michelmores LLP and club secretary of Constructing Excellence Gloucestershire, and Jeremy Williamson, planning consultant to Gloucestershire College. 

Joining Minett-Smith on panel three was Stacey Brooke, social value projects consultant at Ridge and Partners LLP, Stuart Emmerson, director of business development at Hartpury University and Hartpury College, and Hannah McDonnell, executive director of Gloucestershire Community Rail Partnership. 

As for that “mood music”? 

“I think there is definitely optimism,” said White, when the conference paused for a break between sessions. 

“But there are also still challenges there as well. We don’t know all the detail yet, but there is a lot to talk about and I think the general feeling is positive.”

What many in the room wanted to know about was just what those changes to planning might look like, and the burden for answering that one fell largely on the shoulders of Martin Chandler and Kingsley Clarke, whose knowledge of the public sector and the detail around how planning works. 

“There are some really sensible changes proposed that should give some consistency. They are introducing some news standards of measurement to make housing numbers mandatory and more difficult to push back on,” said Chandler. 

“Essentially, the Government is saying to local authorities – if you do not engage, we will intervene.

“If you read the letter from Angela Rayner to planning authorities the words are really encouraging about planning being the real tool to get numbers up. 

“The tone is about making difficult decisions that have been avoided over the last few years. 

“I think the general picture, the mood music, feels good.”