The last few months have seen construction output in Britain fall by record numbers, 40% in April alone, as the world stopped because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Now, the majority of construction sites have reopened in England and Wales and the government is looking to kick start not just the construction industry but the whole economy by getting Britain building.
New measures are being brought in to prevent any further delays and it is expected that there will be a huge programme of investment.
Key to the restart is flexible and longer working hours on construction sites to accommodate social distancing, helping people return to work safely.
Planning permission deadlines will also be extended to save hundreds of construction projects from delays or even cancellation due to expired planning permission. Estimates have highlighted that by the end of this month alone, more than 400 residential permissions providing more than 24,000 new homes would have expired.
Currently planning permission expires after three years if work has not been started but under the reforms sites that have an expiry date between the start of lockdown and the end of this year will now see their consent extended to next April without a new application having to be made.
Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick MP said: ‘Building the homes the country needs is central to the mission of this government and is an important part of our plans to recover from the impact of the coronavirus.
‘New laws will enable us to speed up the pace of planning appeals and save hundreds of construction sites from being cancelled before they have a chance to get spades in the ground, helping to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and create many others.’
There will also be permanent new measures to speed up the appeals process allowing appeals to conclude more quickly. Now the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) will have the power to use more than one procedure – written representations, hearings and inquiries – at the same time when dealing with a planning appeal. A previous pilot programme last year tested this approach and found that this more than halved the time taken for appeal inquiries, from 47 weeks to 23 weeks.
The new measures come at a time when the latest figures show that construction and engineering are strengthening the UK’s job market. During the week ending 14th June construction and engineering reported the greatest increase in vacancies of all sectors across the UK, 16% and 10% respectively, and of all new roles during the same period, the two sectors accounted for 29% of all of the UK’s new hires.