A new report by NLA has revealed that the UK’s built environment makes up 24% of the nation’s total Gross Value Added (GVA), doubling the contribution of the financial services sector
The report treats the built environment sector as encompassing all related professions, including architecture, planning, construction, manufacturing, real estate, and consultancy.
According to their metrics, one in eight of all jobs in the UK is supported by the built environment sector.
The report claims to be the first of its kind
The report claims to reveal the full extent of the UK’s built environment sector’s impact on the economy for the first time, highlighting how, with the right support, it could help boost the country’s economy.
The built environment sector generates £568bn in GVA through a workforce of 3.8m people.
Despite this, the report also shows that the sector is experiencing fragmentation in public investment, policy, and professional representation, which a re-definition of the sector could help solve.
This would include all industries and occupations in the built environment to strengthen its identity and engage more targeted support from policymakers.
Nick McKeogh, chief executive of the NLA, said: “In the 1980s, the ‘British invisibles’ of banking, finance, insurance, law and accountancy professions came together to define the financial services industry as a single sector, and the government and Bank of England seized the opportunity to get behind this concept and put this burgeoning and world-leading sector at the heart of its economic strategy for growth.
“We believe that the opportunity exists for the government to do the same with the built environment sector. Redefining it as a high-growth sector in the Industrial Strategy – rather than as merely a facilitator of growth in other key sectors – would allow built environment industries to reach their potential. Policy, taxation, education and skills reform are needed to change the public’s understanding of its true scale and potential to support national prosperity.”
More information about the report can be found here.
The construction sector is receiving a lot of investment
In June, the new UK infrastructure strategy was published, outlining the next decade of plans and the associated investment strategy, including:
- Housing: supporting delivery of 1.5m new homes this Parliament, through the 10-year Affordable Homes Programme and with investment from the National Housing Bank.
- Transport: Transport for City Regions (TCR) settlement, capital funding to progress work on the Lower Thames Crossing and a new Structures Fund to repair major structures on the road network.
- Water: water companies to quadruple investment in new water infrastructure over the next five years, including developing 9 new reservoirs.
- National Wealth Fund: helping crowd in private investment and drive growth across the UK.
- Clean Energy: including investment by GB Energy, the UK’s first regional hydrogen transport network and store, strategic electricity transmission network investment and electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
- Nuclear energy: investment to enable one of Europe’s first Small Modular Reactor programmes and for nuclear fusion, alongside Sizewell C.
- Schools: deliver rebuilding projects at over 500 schools within the existing School Rebuilding Programme and provide funding certainty out to 2034-35, enabling a further 250 schools to enter the programme.
- Hospitals: delivering 35 hospitals in England via the New Hospital Programme.
- Essential maintenance: providing funding certainty up to 2035 for schools, colleges, prisons, courts and hospitals maintenance programmes.
- Digital connectivity: continuing investment in high-speed internet access via Project Gigabit.
- Flood resilience: ensuring long term readiness via the 10-year flood defence investment programme.
- Justice: three new prisons in England by 2031.
- Defence: committing to 2.6% of GDP by 2027 on NATO qualifying defence spending
This accounts for billions in investment in several sectors, including £6.3bn for the justice estate, £7.9bn in flood defences, £3bn in schools and college estates, and more.
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