UKREiiF 2025: Legislative changes that are shaping our industry

UKREiiF brought echoes of MIPIM and an encouraging sign that our industry has built some real momentum in overcoming challenges and optimising opportunities, writes Paul Dodsworth, group managing director of Caddick Construction.

UKREiiF this year had a real energy; we’re excited as an industry, we’re getting to the heart of our challenges and we’re taking action to move forward. This energy echoed MIPIM, where ambition and bold thinking were high on the agenda. The built environment is facing a lot of challenges, but coming together at UKREiiF confirmed that our challenges are shared. The Building Safety Act for example – it’s a seismic shift that is re-writing every step of delivery. While we welcome its intent, we are unanimously experiencing the same frustrations.

This year, we joined our colleagues at Moda on a panel to discuss the BSA. The Act has definitely amplified a need for collaboration and early engagement. Many of us already work in this way, so this move is positive and welcome. What we’re not seeing, however, is the same collaboration coming from the regulator. Our panellists shared their frustrations about a lack of guidance, which ultimately risks rejected applications to the gateways. Obviously the regular needs to keep some objective distance, but if we’re to successfully operate within these new and unfamiliar processes while taking on more risk, we as an industry would welcome more guidance.

No one would argue with the intent of the Building Safety Act, but we are only now seeing the true reality of its implementation. The biggest challenge here is ambiguity with timescales, and that has widespread implications, from investors through to the end-users. A Gateway 2 submission will be granted statutory compliance in twelve weeks. That is the timeframe given and so that is the timeframe built into the programme, with some tolerance if we’re being shrewd. But many applicants are months into waiting for approval. This uncertainty makes it difficult for all involved. As contractors, we have a team developing a project and preparing to take it to site. If we can’t move forward for months, this causes huge operational challenges. We have an engaged supply chain waiting in the wings, which has planned resource and revenue.

These may simply be teething problems, and when more projects come through the gateway perhaps we’ll gain some momentum. There is, however, a sense we’re seeing a bottleneck that will only worsen if the regulator’s under-resourcing isn’t resolved. Ultimately, the Government has two symbiotic priorities here – implementing the Building Safety Act and building more homes. One could become a barrier to the other. The industry is doing everything to adopt the principles of the Building Safety Act, and work within the new processes laid out for us. The hope is we will see the benefit in the long term, and the challenges we are experiencing now will be worth it once we have hit our stride.

The Procurement Act and social value

If embedding new approaches into our everyday life is our ambition with the Building Safety Act, there are some neat synergies with the introduction of the Procurement Act.

We hosted a panel at UKREiiF on the Procurement Act’s impact on social value, and it felt like a good time to debate this. With the Act itself, it’s early days. Social value has been embedded in our world since the introduction of the Social Value Act 2012, and because most businesses genuinely care about having a positive impact. That’s certainly true of Caddick. Across Yorkshire and the North West over the past year we’ve supported almost 100 apprentices, and we spent more than £3m with social enterprises. This is underpinned by Caddick Group’s ESG strategy, Places for Life, through which we’re working to deliver a greater level of social value.

In procurement, social value is not new as a tender component, but how the Procurement Act determines the delivery of social value will only really materialise in the coming years. There is a lot of debate around tailoring social value. We’ve always believed it needs to address the specific needs of a community, and that’s a view shared by many of our public sector clients. If it’s designed in response to specific community needs then in theory it’s driven more by outcomes than outputs.

What we may start to see from the Procurement Act is social value becoming more standardised. Whether or not that is a good thing is up for debate; but the hope is the Act itself will make it easier for contractors to closely align social value with a local authority’s objectives.

Giving contracting authorities the power to determine their own weighting to social value may give more emphasis to social value investments. But at a time when the public sector has to maximise budgets while also making sure their investment brings added value to the community, developers and contractors need to balance both. Being the cheapest contractor and being the one to bring the most social value are not always mutually exclusive, but striking the balance between both is vital.

• Paul Dodsworth is group managing director at Caddick Construction