IN Brief:
- Jewson and STARK UK have launched the “Let’s Get Britain Building NOW!” campaign.
- The campaign calls for VAT reform, planning improvement, financial incentives, and more investment in skills.
- The move reflects mounting concern over SME builder capacity, housing delivery, and weak construction demand.
Jewson and STARK UK have launched a national campaign calling for measures to stimulate construction demand, support smaller builders, and unlock housing delivery.
The “Let’s Get Britain Building NOW!” campaign calls for policy measures including financial incentives, removal of VAT on refurbishment and retrofit, planning reform, and investment in apprenticeships and skills. It seeks to place the voice of builders and tradespeople closer to government decision-making as the sector continues to face weak demand and constrained delivery capacity.
The campaign arrives at a difficult point for smaller construction businesses. Housebuilding targets remain politically prominent, but many of the businesses expected to deliver local homes, extensions, small developments, retrofit work, and community-scale projects are operating in a market shaped by high finance costs, planning delay, skills gaps, materials inflation, and cautious customer demand.
Merchants have a direct view of that pressure. Trade counters, regional branches, and major build supply networks see changes in order patterns before those changes appear in national output data. When builders reduce stock, delay orders, or switch to smaller jobs, merchants feel the downturn quickly. Jewson’s campaign therefore reflects commercial exposure as well as sector advocacy.
The call for VAT reform on refurbishment and retrofit is particularly significant. The UK’s existing tax structure continues to favour some new-build activity over repair, maintenance, and improvement work, even though retrofit is central to carbon reduction, energy performance, and the renewal of existing housing stock. Removing or reducing VAT on refurbishment could support demand for trades, improve building performance, and reduce the incentive to demolish rather than upgrade.
Planning reform remains another core issue. Small and medium-sized builders have long argued that delays, uncertainty, planning cost, inconsistent local authority capacity, and slow infrastructure agreements reduce their ability to bring forward sites. The launch of regional forums for SME housebuilders earlier this month reflected the same pressure, with builders seeking a stronger voice on planning, viability, and local delivery constraints.
Skills investment is equally important. The latest CITB outlook points to a need for 206,000 additional construction workers by 2030, with demand spread across housing, infrastructure, retrofit, repair, and specialist trades. The issue is not only the number of trainees entering the system, but whether businesses have the confidence and cash flow to take on apprentices, provide site experience, and retain skilled labour through uneven workloads.
Financial incentives are likely to be central to the campaign’s argument because demand-side confidence remains weak. Even where households or clients want to proceed with work, interest rates, mortgage costs, energy bills, and general uncertainty have delayed projects. Builders that once relied on a steady flow of extensions, refurbishments, and small developments are facing longer decision cycles and more price sensitivity.
The merchant sector is managing the same demand picture through product sales. Recent Builders Merchants Building Index data showed April like-for-like value sales down 0.6% year on year, with volumes down 3.5% and prices up 3%. Heavy building materials also remained under pressure. Those numbers indicate that the issue is not simply price inflation; fewer products are moving through the channel.
Campaigns of this type are most useful when they connect broad policy asks to practical delivery problems. Planning reform affects whether small sites move. VAT reform affects the economics of retrofit and refurbishment. Apprenticeship investment affects whether local builders can expand. Financial incentives affect whether clients and households proceed with work rather than deferring projects.
Jewson’s campaign is therefore both a commercial intervention and a market signal. Merchants depend on active builders, and active builders depend on viable projects. Without stronger confidence across planning, skills, tax, and demand, construction targets risk remaining detached from the workload available to the trades, regional builders, and supply businesses expected to deliver them.
