The United Kingdom could be on the cusp of a new timber wave, with the timber supply chain calling on the newly elected Sir Keir Starmer government to enact “quick policy wins” to support the rapid growth of the low-carbon built environment.
That is according to a new manifesto presented by the Confederation of Timber Industries (CTI), the peak body for timber in the United Kingdom. The manifesto calls on the Labour government to embrace the policy reforms outlined by the Climate Change Committee.
In recent years, the United Kingdom has become a hive of activity for mass timber projects led by Jonathan Smales’s “The Phoenix,” Manchester’s Ev0’s – the UK’s greenest building, and Brent Cross Town Square – Europe’s most ambitious net-zero urban project.
However, despite gains in volumetric construction, just 9% of English low-set dwellings are timber-framed (based on 2019 figures), compared to Scotland’s 92% – with Rishi Sunak’s former Conservative Government looking to introduce a roadmap in December which reduced the barriers to timber construction, unlocking the industry at scale and speed.
“Over the past five years, our colleagues from all of the built environment professions have done some incredible work to lay the groundwork for a switch to more sustainable forms of construction,” according to CTI Chair Alex Goodfellow, with the United Kingdom still the world’s third-largest importer of timber products.
“The construction industry is ahead of the regulation, with existing capacity and expertise to rapidly scale up low-carbon, high-quality, and safe use of timber in construction – as has long been recommended by the Climate Change Committee – within the right policy framework,” Mr Goodfellow said.
“With this manifesto, we wanted to provide references for the next Government of the key policies – like Part Z, an amendment to the building regulations to include embodied carbon –which they could put in place in their first 100 days to get Britain building.”
“The core policies we included, whether boosting sustainable construction, enabling retrofit, or scaling up housebuilding – are all independently conceived,” Mr Goodfellow said, adding that the focus is providing businesses with a level playing field to compete and ensure that the UK can meet its legal commitment to reduce emissions.
Other manifesto points include policy calls to support timber industry businesses in scaling up tree planting and sharing examples of how timber is prepared to provide solutions today.
- To learn more about the newly elected Labour government’s policies, click on Wood Central’s UK election special feature.
