Unless Labour acts fast, Britain's growth mission is doomed to fail

Yahoo

03-04-2025

The great philosopher Groucho Marx once said: 'There are only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan.'
These words came to mind while listening to the Chancellor during her Spring Statement last week.
The Chancellor has acknowledged the reality of the UK's challenges and just how hard it will be to stimulate growth.
However, nine months since coming to power, I'm not clear on the Government's detailed plan for achieving growth. We understand and support their objectives and want to play our part to deliver on them. But to do so, we need a plan.
The Government is rightly ambitious for the UK and has started to show a willingness to make tough choices. That must continue if we are to succeed. A plan involves making specific choices, creating trade-offs, and prioritising certain actions over others, rather than attempting to achieve everything, everywhere, all at once.
I wanted to set out some specific actions that will move us more quickly towards growth in the areas of regulation, infrastructure, and skills.
On regulation, the Prime Minister has stated that politicians have delegated too many decisions to regulators rather than politicians taking decisions for which they are elected. I agree.
The Government has begun to work with regulators to make them more supportive of growth but this approach may take a while to bear results.
A regulator's instinct tends towards preserving regulation rather than removing it.
I'm keen to see more direct intervention from the Government to evaluate which regulations support economic growth, which are unnecessary, and which can be adjusted. A smarter approach to regulation, if you will.
An interesting case study from the real estate sector is the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), which was established with good intentions following the Grenfell tragedy.
Instead of trying to improve the existing building safety regime, the previous Conservative government created an entirely new process with a scope that was too broad and inadequate resourcing. The result is that major housing schemes face delays of anything up to 18 months before they can even get on site.
The Chancellor was clear that planning reform is something that will drive growth in this parliament. However, the delays caused by the BSR risk undermining that outcome and require urgent government intervention.
And while significant progress has been made, there is more to be done within planning reform, especially as documents such as the London Plan expand and address topics far beyond their intended scope. This policy creep increases costs, drives delays, and reduces benefits to the local community.
Real estate is an example of a sector heavily impacted by extensive, conflicting regulation with no single body having oversight of the totality.
A 'smarter regulation tsar' for real estate could be tasked to oversee and streamline these regulations with a specific remit to unlock growth and help the Government hit its targets.
Turning to infrastructure, the Government has sought to tackle the UK's less-than-stellar track record, bringing strategy and delivery closer together with the new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.
This is welcome, but it's important that we place urgency and speed at the heart of delivery. This needs to come from the Government providing strong political direction to ensure that it prioritises fewer projects and explicitly focusses on accelerating their delivery.
To build confidence, the Government could provide planning permission in principle for key shortlisted projects, avoiding lengthy processes without guaranteed consent.
This approach can help foster trust and encourage investment by demonstrating the UK's commitment to delivering infrastructure, and is consistent with the direction of the Government's planning reforms.
Examining skills, there is a long way to go. Private sector businesses haven't consistently invested enough in their workforce – a challenge made more difficult for many businesses given the National Insurance and minimum wage increases.
While successive governments have changed their approach to education and skills training and further education has been squeezed. We have two issues to resolve: equipping our workforce for now and for the future.
The 'now' problem involves addressing the significant skills gap. For example, the Construction Industry Training Board estimates that the UK will need 250,000 extra construction workers by 2028.
The Government has recently announced £600m of investment to train 60,000 more skilled construction workers, which is welcome. These entry-level apprenticeships are important, but we should also be thinking about how this funding could be used as mid-career apprenticeships to support people to re-train.
The 'next' problem focusses on future skills. The Industrial Strategy should guide this by identifying sectors and sub-sectors that will secure the UK's competitive advantage and developing training that aligns.
Combined authority mayors could also play a greater role in tackling future skills, aligning local skills agendas with the Industrial Strategy.
An excellent prototype is Andy Burnham's M-Bacc in Greater Manchester, which is an alternative qualification for pupils who don't go to university.
Directing funding and powers to forge links between education, skills providers, employers, and regional leaders seems the best way to ensure our workforces are fit for the future.
As the Chancellor made clear, the world has changed. We can't just will growth into being and instead need to adapt to the realities we face. The UK's businesses are prepared to play their part but need to understand the gameplan to do so.
Mark Allan is the chief executive of Landsec
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