Examinatinon of Witnesses (Questions 420-435)
HOME BUILDERS
FEDERATION
10 DECEMBER 2007
Q420 Mr Weir: We have heard evidence
of regional variation in the way companies take on apprenticeships
for example. Does the same sort of thing apply here—that
you get large regional variations? Is there more of a tendency
perhaps in the south not to go in for this scheme than in the
north? Does that happen?
Mr Slaughter: I think there is
a difference between the north and south, because a higher percentage
of the workforce is probably directly employed in the north of
the country; and therefore placing apprentices in your own company
is easier. We had a discussion about this with some of our major
members fairly recently, and they did substantiate this north/south
difference. In the south, where there is a larger degree of indirect
employment on site, then it is not always so easy to secure the
placements from the point of view of our members, the home builders.
They sometimes have to work quite hard with their contractors
to take people on as apprentices. One of the issues in terms of
the take-up of grant and support is probably related to that phenomenon.
Q421 Mr Weir: Going back to the question
about the CSCS cards, is there also a north/south divide in the
way these are taken up? It has struck me that the 86% in the construction
industry, excluding home building, is quite high, given the evidence
we have heard about migrant labour particularly in the south.
I wondered if there were any regional variations in that figure
as far as you are aware.
Mr Slaughter: Not that I am aware
of, no. That certainly has not come through the audits that we
have carried out. We do have companies that have strengths in
different parts of the country. Although we have effectively ten
major companies in the sector, they all tend to have a strength
in particular parts of the country, and there is no discernible
pattern of one group being stronger than another in terms of performance.
Q422 Mr Bailey: Zero-carbon homes:
marrying this to the skills agenda, do you think you have sufficient
skills to deliver the Government's targets by 2016?
Mr Slaughter: What an enormous
question! I suppose we do not entirely know at this stage because
we do not know for sure how we are going to achieve the target
at this point. There are lots of issues about how to achieve it.
Q423 Mr Bailey: There are different
technologies to achieve it.
Mr Slaughter: Yes, and we certainly
do not know what the right technical solutions and commercial
solutions to energy supply, for example, will be at this stage,
so it makes it difficult to give a hard and fast answer to the
skills question. The way that a number of people look at this
in the sector is to see that the suppliers and manufacturers of
the new products and services that will be involved in achieving
the zero-carbon homes standard will probably have a major part
to play in this, because they will have to communicate the benefits
of their product and instruct the installers, the operators and
the site managers who are going to use the products in order to
build the homes and have them working on the right basis. We suspect
that quite a lot of the skills requirements and training requirements
will effectively be pushed by the manufacturers and suppliers
in the chain, wanting to make sure that their products are successful
by communicating the right information and the right instruction
to other people who need to have it.
Q424 Mr Bailey: Do you think the
Government is allowing the industry enough flexibility in the
way in which it achieves these targets—or towards achieving
them?
Mr Slaughter: That is a debate
in progress, I would say. If I could give you a brief explanation
of why I say that, as far as we can see probably the critical
issue to resolve will be how you achieve residual energy supply
for zero-carbon homes. Zero-carbon homes is the performance standard
post construction, so it is about having no net carbon emissions
from the use of a home once it is occupied and built. But there
is going to be a need for residual energy supply because for various
reasons we are not going to be able to do everything through better
insulation. The question is then how you achieve that residual
energy supply. That is where a lot of the uncertainties I mentioned
earlier rest because we do not know enough about the capabilities
of the technologies. The average size of a site, which I referred
to earlier, of 27 units, means that you are not going to necessarily
get everything on site. You need to have the flexibility of other
solutions. At the moment the working definition of zero carbon
is relatively tightly drawn. Our wish would be to see a somewhat
more flexible definition of zero carbon that would enable us to
have a reasonably wide range of technical solutions and commercial
solutions available to enable us to achieve this standard in an
effective and cost-efficient way.
Q425 Mr Bailey: I very much welcome
those last comments because one of my hobby horses is that there
did not seem to be enough attention focused on the potential of
geothermal energy, both in the public and private sectors—houses
and offices. What is your assessment of the potential of geothermal?
Mr Slaughter: My understanding
is that it is quite significant, but not everywhere in the country
will be suited to that type of application. That is one of the
issues we face. There is not any one single knock-out answer to
how you achieve this in terms of the technology, which is why
we would like to have that menu of options available. As far as
we are concerned, this is simply a means of achieving the standard
in a cost-effective consumer-friendly, practical way. Hopefully
it means that more commercial partners from the energy supply
industry will be interested in working out sensible arrangements
about how we do it.
Q426 Mr Bailey: Do you think the
fact that the public sector is not a significant client for new
housing makes it more difficult to promote the environmental sustainability
agenda?
Mr Slaughter: Yes it does, essentially.
I am quite familiar with the view of the wider construction sector
that public procurement, which is about 40% of the market is a
significant means to achieve these objectives. We have nothing
like a 40% public sector drive in house building. It is an issue.
We have English Partnerships and other public agencies that are
able to do quite a bit through demonstration projects, but they
do not have the critical mass that would exist from Government
procurement in other fields. So we have to look at other approaches
which will work and have equivalent results. I know that this
is something that people find slightly surprising, but what I
call an intelligent approach to regulation is one of the things
we need at a national level. The substitute, in a way, for public
procurement in our case, is setting the right standards in the
right time frame in national building regulations, for example;
then you can try and create a level playing-field for the industry
in that way.
Q427 Chairman: In Worcestershire
we are a bit suspicious of the Government at present, because
we have two eco-towns planned for my constituency and the Government
is not telling us who the promoters are for these towns or what
the criteria are to assess whether to go ahead or not. It is very
important because large proportions of affordable housing in a
brand new environment suggests that there must be equally eco-friendly
large portions of affordable employment in the same area. The
Government does not seem to be doing a great deal to build confidence
in its wider objective as part of the eco-town proposals. Do you
think the Government is doing enough to build a framework in which
zero-carbon housing can be a reality?
Mr Slaughter: I think we would
like to see them do more certainly. The eco-towns proposal is
an interesting one, but at this stage we do not know enough about
how that is going to operate. The Government is in the process
of drawing up the criteria you would like to see, and I agree
that that is very important.
Q428 Chairman: But the applications
are in.
Mr Slaughter: The expressions
of interest are in, but I do not think they constitute applications
as such because the criteria have not been settled for the scheme.
If we had a concern about eco-towns it is more in the direction
of how long they will take to come through. The point about the
substitution for the public sector pull that you were just talking
about is a quite difficult one. This is how the Government is
trying to do it; but the mass is not going to be that big that
early, despite the plans for eco-towns. Perhaps the biggest concern
there is whether we can find other ways of putting together good
learning experiences at an earlier stage than the eco-towns themselves
might deliver.
Q429 Mr Weir: In your memorandum
you call for an "enlightened longer term strategy" for
the evolution of the national building regulations to assist effective
innovation in sustainable construction. What do you mean by this?
Mr Slaughter: A number of things.
We have a number of wishes about how building regulations in particular
might evolve to make it easier for the industry to concentrate
and deliver effective innovation. The building regulations have
become quite complex over time: new parts have been added to them
on a relatively piecemeal basis, and changes have taken place
on a piecemeal basis. We would like to see a longer term strategic
vision for the key changes that the Government would like to see
in the building regulations over time. The zero-carbon initiative
is a good example of that, where the Government has said, "Let
us have three changes in building regulations over the next several
years to 2016, and so we have a plan for a step of changes that
industry can work with." We would like to see similar vision
in other fields of the building regulations. We would also like
to see the regulations become less prescriptive than they have
some times been in the past, more based on better regulation principles
of output-based regulation, not seeking to say you achieve the
output in this or that specific way, but establish robust output
and leave more scope in the industry to achieve that in a range
of different ways. We would also like to see ideas which we have
had one successful experience of on part E of the building regulations
on sound insulation of a pattern-book approach, which industry
has led through development pattern-book examples which are then
verified as sound for achieving the desired objective under the
regulations being accepted, so that you have a more industry-owned
and industry-led process of binding effective ways of achieving
regulatory outcomes. That then becomes less burdensome for industry
and opens up the door to innovation. There is a range of ideas
of this type that we would like to see adopted more generally.
Q430 Mr Weir: The argument against
is always that if you simplify the building regulations you are
reducing effectiveness, especially in an industry that we have
heard is very much price-led. How do you counter that argument?
Mr Slaughter: On one level there
is a concern that the current regulations—some of them in
recent years have been very difficult to enforce because of the
way they are drawn up. They are quite complex and not particularly
easy to understand for compliance officers as well as developers.
A simpler, less proscriptive, less complex set of regulations
would in one sense be much easier to enforce because it would
be much clearer what you were doing. If you have industry ownership
in the way I was suggesting, you also create an incentive for
people to do things the right way. There may be other things you
need to look at as well, and we are not suggesting that there
should not be proper compliance; but in many ways a better, fitter
for purpose future set of regulations might be easier to enforce
and better for everyone to live with.
Mr Weir: Other witnesses have complained
that the building regulations seem to change very regularly. Is
it really simplification, or more that you know what you are doing
for a longer period and you do not want so many changes?
Q431 Chairman: Just to add to that,
also the changes are announced at the eleventh hour and compliance
is required at very short notice.
Mr Slaughter: All of those actually.
We would like to see a better future approach on all of those
issues. It is certainly simplification, but a clear route map
for the future is important because it has been an industry frustration
in recent times that there have been too many changes with not
enough advance notice, and that does not encourage efficiency
or effective application, and it does not encourage forward investment
planning by the supply chain, which is often very important in
this field. The notice of implementation is also a key issue.
All three of those points we would support.
Q432 Chairman: I asked you at the
beginning about the fragmentation of the industry. I have heard
it suggested that the fragmentation of the UK home building industry
in particular means that its R&I record is not what it might
be if it had a greater critical mass. Is that a criticism you
are familiar with, and do you think it is fair?
Mr Slaughter: We have no statistics
to be able to comment scientifically. In one sense we would not
think it is fair because the industry has innovated quite a lot
in terms of the product you get in your home today. They are much
more energy-efficient where even compared with a few years ago
the design specifications have moved on a lot, and what is fitted
as standard in the home is quite different. In another sense I
think you are correct, and that is why we would want to see a
sensible approach to national regulation through building regulations,
rather than no regulation. Personally I would agree with what
the Stern report had to say in its chapter on construction, where
it pointed very strongly to the fact that there was a lot of fragmentation
in the sector as a whole; therefore if there was going to be a
drive to successful improvement in the environmental performance
of the construction sector, the right approach through national
regulation was going to be an essential part of how that was done.
We would very much support that. The industry can do a lot of
things, but in certain key areas, without the right national regulatory
framework, it becomes a problem because you cannot necessarily
achieve competitive advantage successfully for an investment that
might be quite risky as well as capital intensive when your competitors
are not necessarily having to do the same thing.
Mr Stewart: Chairman, the feedback
to smaller companies is important because clearly they cannot
afford to spend as much on research and development as large companies;
but as long as the timescales for these changes are adequate so
that the industry somewhere—large companies and others and
research organisations can do research and transmit that information
to the smaller companies, then they can come along behind. As
John has already said, it is a lot to do with the timescales and
the plans, rather than doing things too quickly or requiring things
without proper planning.
Q433 Chairman: Last week we heard
from the Building Research Establishment and the two research
information associations, CIRIA and BSRIA and they were both expressing
concerns about research innovation in construction generally,
in quite worrying terms. The word "crisis" was used
on a number of occasions. Is that a label you would attach to
your part of the industry as well?
Mr Slaughter: I do not think we
would, no. If you take the example of zero-carbon, the fact that
we have this eight, nine, 10-year timetable that was announced
a year or so ago by the Government, which we have supported and
which was supported by the Construction Products Association for
example, means that we are all trying to work together about how
we get there. We look at it the other way round: having got that
framework agreed and in the public policy domain, the industry
now has the confidence to know what it has to achieve. I do not
think we would feel that was the case in our sector.
Q434 Chairman: We asked all our witnesses
this final question and I am not sure how relevant it is, but
I am going to ask it anyhow, because we have got the Olympic Delivery
Authority coming in in the early part of the New Year. It is only
something like 4,000 homes that are planned as part of the legacy
of the Olympics Village site, but is there anything you think
the ODA should be doing, speaking as home builders, that they
are not doing or could be doing better, or are you broadly content
to leave it to them to get on with it?
Mr Slaughter: It is very hard
for us to say. We have not been involved with the ODA at all.
Q435 Chairman: Compared to Thames
Gateway it is quite modest, is it not?
Mr Slaughter: Yes. It is relatively
small-scale in terms of what we are talking about. The way in
which they have looked at the housing element of the project has
not been something where they need to come to us specifically
because it has been part of the wider tendering process.
Chairman: I do not think we have requested
further detailed information during this session, but if, on reflection,
you feel there are things you would like to amplify, please feel
free to give us some further information. We appreciate the time
and trouble you have taken to come before us. It would have been
remiss of us not to look to home building as part of the evidence
we are taking. We are very grateful for the time and trouble you
have taken.
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