The Construction Jobs Plan | Episode 132

0:00This episode is brought to you in partnership with Adobe Acrobat. Have we ever featured a think tank on destruction disrupted? At least I've had to have self-aggrandizing and applauding things that I've involved in. Fabian's society and Centre for Social Justice, I think I mentioned their report a while back that I was cited in. Probably only when I've been inflating my own ego, I don't know if we've actually covered anything that they're any of them have published outside of that. And there's the intro. Hello and welcome to Construction Disrupted, the podcast that cuts through the noise of the built environment by creating even more noise about the built environment. Every week we bring you the issue shaping the sector we love in a format that keeps you sharp and saves you time with three headlines, two expert opinions and one takeaway that you might actually use. I'm Ryan Jones and each week I'll be joined by my co-host Peter Sumpson. Between us we've more than four decades experience in marketing and construction and we're here to use that to decode the stories that matter in the week that's just come. We'll be tackling issues you familiar with but instead of repeating the same headlines

1:00we'll be going behind the stories beyond the doom and into the ideas and actions that might actually move the sector forward. Once a join us subscribe to Construction Disrupted wherever you get your podcast from. Ryan Jones another week another very strange intro. I'm going to keep this quite simple before I find out how your week's been and how you're actually doing. I'd quite like to know can you speak any of the languages and what will you like at school learning of the languages? Very very limited bits of cut-in-manifilic I'm going to be tested now so let me let me try and caveat this completely before there's another gotcha question. Limited conversational French and Spanish. I wish I knew more but yeah I was okay at school with it I think I just out of practice and it's this and I was talking about this with another parent last week. It's one of those skills that similar to swimming where in my head I think I'm fine until I have calls to actually

2:05partake and then realise that yeah maybe should have brushed up on the skills and kept that going. Yeah absolutely with any consolation I look like a drowning animal that shouldn't be in water and I try to swim in any speed. It's not pleasant. A treading water I was the language question come from. Yeah see I've always wanted to learn a different language I like Italian, Spanish, French so I thought you know what I'm going to I'm going to go for French and see see see how I get on. It's not that easy. No. You're going to be honest. It's not that easy. You know the first five minutes I'm learning and it's really good and then kind of tape us off a little bit from then but well again similar to my swimming thing Pete I thought I was reasonable conversational French until visiting Paris and every taxi driver looking at you like you've got three heads and I'm doing the accent I think they're my very dream boy and Steve McLaren got the coaching job in

3:08Holland that basically so yeah not as good as I thought. Yeah yes similar for me I think with with French it's all about the pronunciation more than anything and then it's very male female at linguistic so yeah I'm finding it quite tricky but I'm going to continue. Good. How are you doing anyway? I'm good yeah I'm alright so yeah it's busy at the minute I'm hoping that we are a decent barometer for for everyone else in this sector but yeah I don't know I don't know what's happening but it's the people are back from from this summer holidays now and it's time to crack on. Interesting stuff for us to get stuck into on the show this week and some more broad stuff than that again I'll do my politics a shrub to bit very quickly before we talk back to it later but all I was on on Mr Healy and he's upcoming budget to see how how a lot of these things are going to be funded or not so yeah I don't know what's driving it

4:09but it's it's manic in the best way possible at the minute how's everything with you? Very very similar nice nice flow of work coming coming through and keeps us keep just keen and focus which is really good I think there's quite a lot of positivity in the industry I really do although you know it's that balance isn't it for every positive there'll be somebody that is feeling it a little bit so shout out to everybody that is and to keep on going really yeah completely completely yeah so we're going to do it slightly differently this week in the I want to introduce our partners Adobe Acrobat first off which we usually do one or two stories in but the reason I'm doing that is because it links to our first first story so what we're going to cover in in our first headline is the latest construction management salary and market trends survey from CIOB

5:11what I did with this survey which you can download PDF you can download 15 pages long I put it into a PDF space and then just asked AI assistant give me the information that I need to know about this survey alone behold it did it within a macro seconds so while we're talking about this first headline I'm going to use my PDF space which can be found in Adobe Acrobat which is our partner for this podcast to highlight some stats and information that just suck him through the 15 page long survey so our first headline like we said is actually from construction management as you might think it would be because that's part of the CIOB and headline is construction professionals want more than high salaries survey finds and this like I said it's part of a or the information is from a survey about CIOB into salary and market trends within construction

6:12and what I found top level is that people think to be getting paid more at a certain level within construction but they don't just want salary salaries and just their main or sole focus should I say there's a whole host of other things that they look for when they're looking for new roles or potential roles or new companies that they can they can work with so what is your how you found this what you found interesting if anything is there anything that sticks out for you? Yeah there's a few but I guess Caviar's first for anyone listening to this that hasn't yet had time to dive into the report so as Pete rightly points out this is the respondents to this are people at management level so we need to be careful that this isn't average salaries in the sector have increased uniformly or kind of construction performance relative to to other parts of the economy and it is one thing to take out the app also the CIOB are very honest actually they run this every couple of years I think it's two years since the last one and one of the things

7:15that they're clear on is this isn't the same data set they're not asking the same people and the same respondents time and again and actually the there's a profile information of respondents skews slightly more senior in in this version than in previous ones so that there's a pretty steep jump in average earnings and so on and the number of people earning above certain benchmarks so I don't mean it's a straightforwardness to say more senior respondents equals higher salary I do think there is something above ever uniform trend but yeah we're flagging those two things just before I throw a load of numbers as our dear listeners so yeah the average responded salary on that on that was almost 78,000 now that was 70,000 two years ago so again as I tried to point out it's too large a jump I think just to be explained away by a slightly more senior respondent I think that's probably something is happening within sector and obviously we know cost of living pressures inflationary factors and so on that sounds like the sector is at the very least it feels like the sector's keeping pace with that at a senior level which is good and

8:18around half a respondents earn more than 70,000 a year we've just ended a quarter earning more than a hundred thousand pounds a year and the numbers earning more than 150,000 pounds a year has risen from 2.9% in 2024 up to 6.8% this time so we have some high earners in the sector and it is to be a tricky one I've had this conversation with people before that while I think it's maybe slightly slightly crass to sort of throwing you know you could be earning this much in this sector we know as our survey data and other bits are shown that we do have something of a perception problem a perception gap with the wider public and therefore okay just making people aware that it sounds really obvious because we know the makeup of these businesses and the size of these businesses but the executive careers exist in this space and yeah these opportunities are there I don't if leading with a salary is necessarily the thing that's what come on to but yeah I think there is certainly something there for those that are more interested in earning potential that

9:20we do have a story to tell is not something that we need to shy away from but as you write lead off on Pete and then something that comes out a lot here is that that salaries aren't enough and the more I think about it kind of it jumped out at me initially because it's like well the numbers are clearly so positive there and so good and so competitive that yeah not just like you know take your pay packet and be done with it but yeah at first I kind of I was a bit flumexed by but then the more I think about it that we're thinking about our C suite and our senior executives and so on you know why would they not want better work life balance why would they not want sort of other benefits that are less sort of salary and and remuneration focused and more about you know more paid leave or you know better sort of childcare and you know parenting options and so on and more flexibility and hybrid working and blah blah blah in the same way that people worked in other parts of the economy and other your roles would also demand and certainly again speaking as an employer we have those kinds of questions all the time you know I could get a

10:24market rate salary at several other similar sorts of business what else do you guys offer outside of outside of that and it doesn't mean you need to throw more money at people it doesn't mean that you know there's there's massive investment it's just about yeah but as an employer understanding what the market looks like and and what those people want and again we talk about skills gap every every couple of weeks it feels like and we talk about sort of labor factors and we will talk a little bit later about the government's sort of plans for for that coming down the track we need to get some of these you know softer things right as well and so so yeah I have to I think it's it's it's pretty interesting and but there's there's a lot in there that yeah if you would to take this away from construction and look at it as senior roles across the economy then yeah I get where they're coming from and I think it's probably it's probably reasonable and probably typical where then I miss that no I you can you can I mean you can dig into the numbers all all you want and and I will go to a little bit more more context for certain things but

11:30you're right in terms of you remove the word construction and and you look at the salaries that the increased I think it's that image problem that that we always talk about in the it's not there it's not the salary it's not the benefits it's the word construction that seems to be the problem and the connotations that that draws with and seeing these seeing what people want apart from that salary is quite interesting it's easy for people to say this in surveys as well but when it comes to the crunch you know maybe they wouldn't be as tempted by certain things over in a book best salary but I don't think they're saying that I think the saying that including the salary other things are important so there was the overall satisfaction and most respondents were were quite happy with the employee packages that they were getting holiday allowances they were happy with health and well-being which I was quite surprised that was over 70% satisfied the interesting thing

12:36I think it's so decisive is that salary incentive 75% were satisfied but it was also one of the highest dissatisfaction rates as well so it's it's one of those balancing things you never going to please everybody are you it's just just impossible you know we don't work in we don't work in tech and we're not a startup in AI so no one's ever going to be no one's ever going to be fully happy can't please everybody well else can what else can we say one thing to point out though is that it this was the survey as you might well expect 71% were members of this CIOB you show you the level of of seniority in in a way but I think the numbers that used spoke about were that the main ones you know I like using pdf spaces in Adobe Acrobat there's loads of different tiny little tip bits that we could dive into but we'd be here all

13:42if we could go through a role well can I can I throw you a couple more p that that jumps out to me and you can you can tell me whether or not pdf spaces picks up on them because I think as there always is that there's some additional themes here that it tie into things that we've discussed previously I think that there's a bigger piece here about the sort of retention of talent within the sector which is something we spoke about a couple of months but there was a couple of op-ed pieces around we can't just keep focusing on pipeline without solving the problem of why people are leaving I take your point and you're right that these RCI or B members and therefore you know again one assumes people that are more senior by default in their careers and so on the did the demography from an age point of view it is up there as has been the case in all of these stories that we've discussed so nothing nothing sort of groundbreaking there but something that we do need to keep an eye on 87% of respondents were male and again that that's not typical for

14:42so for all of my my earlier points on you know thematically this this feels consistent with what I'd expect from executives across the economy you would hope that all the past the economy are maybe doing a better job of getting that male to female ratio right and I would hope that yeah no not tokenism or anything like that but just that's that's not something to be proud of is it that we we still skew that that male heavy within the sector and so that's something that does need to be does need to be sorted again what does that next cohort of management look like and not just from a numbers point of view but yeah making sure that we are more reflective of the society that we are building things for because that that feels slightly broken but one again get your bingo cards out kids but one point of lagging here is that the respondents here feel that they have roles that are pretty well insulated against AI ironically given PDF spaces having to look at this for us but and things to kind of sell the sector to new entrants and also as a means of retaining people

15:44not just where you're we've seen you know adverse about your chat GPT can't help you build a wall or whatever the case may be and making these really kind of false equivalent arguments about how safe construction careers are versus AI but interesting that execs feel that their roles are pretty well safeguarded against it as well and I wonder is that something that we need to be talking about a little bit more if there are other parts of if the employer employee market that are a little less secure in that respect that yeah maybe that's a territory to explore because we always talk about trades being the skills shortages in in the main and I suppose that's that perception of construction and that's where your mind goes with trades one thing that PDF spaces did highlight is that over 75% are confident confident about job availability in the next five years that sounds high but it's down from 85% two years ago so it's still strong but there's

16:44obviously something going on there an 80% are in permanent employment 10% freelance or self-employed so indicates a stable workforce if if nothing if nothing else um yeah male female split was like completely male dominant yeah nice absolutely well yeah only and there there is a lot of good things happening there so so please guard the next time we run this in two years time we start to address that and bring that down and maybe again that that next cohort of managers that are stepping up there and our efforts in improving the image of the sector started to have an impact on that just from your your previous point Pete on on job availability and this is entirely anecdotal but even if if that percentage drops a little bit from what I can see on LinkedIn and obviously things within mainstream media about and I'm really even talking at the neat end of things I'm talking at more more senior careers and so on that um whether it's AI whether it's the economy combination there are I would imagine um but yeah that that might be another decent thread for us

17:49to pull on from an attraction retention point of view that there are availability is it's are you not going to share about the fact that it's less competitive perhaps than other parts of the the economy but I think there's a real potential here for us to um to hoover up some some serious talent I think there's going to be some from looking at other sectors there's going to be some very talented people at senior level that are available are at the very least that are starting to look around for other opportunities because their their world doesn't feel quite as secure as it used to so um yeah I'll be fascinated to to take a look at the the report in two years time and see what's moved because um yeah it just feels like everything in a we'll probably talk about this more than next story won't we boy it feels like everything is kind of on the cusp at the minute um so yeah to see what that looks like once we push on through that would be it would be interesting and because we were in a tight ship and we're really seamless this is a fantastic segue into our next headline which is from construction news uh headline reads government to

18:49publish construction jobs plan this year as you might imagine this is all about the government setting out a plan to help promote jobs within construction low low and behold no one's in any any any sneakers from uh from those headlines are they pretty pretty straightforward but there's a lot to unpack in the will be in the future with this what's your first thoughts on what they're saying will be in this well my first sort of take is that this is a pretty easy one for you and I because it's um as as previous governments before them have done this is an announcement about the announcement rather than the actual kind of policy detail so we will have to broom around back around this to some point um this comes off and addressed that Matthew Pennycock made last week to announce that that this is coming many of the issues again anyone has listened to this enough or and keeps an eye on trade media we we've covered at length you know we we know what the sector

19:50needs to deliver and needs to do um but this is the government coming out with a more detailed plan of of granular detail as to to what that looks like um so for for for listeners that haven't kept up with this um or haven't listened to it says sort of back episodes shame on you um but in terms of additional commitment government's already putting in 625 million over the parliament and we've discussed things previously p on the you know construction technical extents colleges skills boot camps additional foundational apprenticeships industry placements etc etc etc um so this this is a framework basically there's joining all of these existing interventions together and providing a bit more detail as to exactly what that looks like I think one of the things to to kind of zoom out a little bit I alluded to it earlier I've done how much you've kept up with this people um John Healey the the the reasonably new chancellor um after all of these exciting announcements from Burnham on the way in about you know council house building revolution and these things happening you can tell he's now the person with the red briefcase is now starting to

20:56not walk things back I wouldn't say it's no we're not talking you turns or anything but certainly there's an exercise in expectations management and and pragmatism at the minute as says to what these things look like and this announcement from Matthew Penny Cook feels somewhere in between those two um which which I don't hate I think one of the things that I I've become a little bit worried um by similar to to the starma government with um a lot of the planning reform stuff where the sector kind of applaud these individual announcements with and you step back and look at the volume of things that are coming down the line from a policy point of view and it feels overwhelming um and I started to feel that way a little bit about skills um but they're each of these things in isolation are up you would cheer any one of them um investment in colleges investment in placements and and all these kinds of things um but if if I'm a business owner within the space if I'm someone that needs to build out a labor force yeah do I feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things we

21:59spoken before about the number of different um even different qualifications you know what is the equivalent sort of level between all of these and and therefore you know what are my requirements so so that was point one um and I'll handle it to you and and you can tell me your thoughts on this one thing that I did find interesting um because again this is essentially a it's a parliamentary address rather than anything substantive but a recognition of how difficult businesses have found it to create employment opportunities that this isn't a kind of bash the sector opportunity um and a recognition that what's needed more than anything else is a consistent pipeline of works that people can make informed decisions with confidence about their workforce requirements and and the viability of that so it's no good telling people you need to create more roles and you need to be a better employer and so on these are businesses at the end of the day um we've spoken a length about construction sadly having more insolvencies and administration events than other parts of the economy um and yeah at least the government it feels like there are enough people in there that

23:02have an understanding of sector have worked there to some degree and all the likes of Mike Reeder the Northamptonshire MP that looks after the the all-party parliamentary group um it is from the sector and it is time-served and so on so yeah have a bit more confidence that something tangible will come of this um and yeah I do I do I think that's my one my one concern I'd be very interested to see the detail just to see um how simple we can make this for the people that are ultimately out the the co-efface and and we'll be doing the implementation work what's your what's your read of this one I mean they gave a few little sneak tipped bits didn't they through to out there yes they cite that the industry due to the loss of EU labour post-Brexit and high dropout rates for construction courses which is which is rather worrying but what we've heard in in the last few weeks is that there's going to be a huge focus on on training and upscaling which it all seems linked all this sort of stuff

24:06and you'd like to think that there has been some thoughts and some threads and some joining up thinking here and we covered this new towns proposal back in episode 109 in April of seven new towns which the the government were proposing right across England and in in this far forward to now what what we're seeing is that they say well we're going to have three it is not more spades in the ground on these new towns which is great but seven was the starter which would have been nicer and what I I'd hope to see in this plan is that and they mention it here is that the new towns are linked to investment in skills and developing those skills in certain areas around those new towns are commutable like so so people can be part of this these projects but they also cite

25:09modern construction methods as a way of enticing the next generation and new skills into the industry and unless you've been living under a rock then you don't understand that MMC just come up with a bit of bashing and hasn't had the the best start in life if you're like within construction but I can see the appeal you know it's more factory based you know on site it's a very different way of delivering a a build so I'd like to think that all these things are joined up and that potentially the these new towns are the the hubs if you like of what's going to bring investment bring jobs and bring skills into into the construction industry well I think you're back to our certainty word again Pete I think you know for an MMC point of view the cost of creating a factory in in sort of utilising that space all of the the equipment robotics and everything else that's required having staff that are permanent salary members of staff rather than casual sort of

26:11subbies that can be brought on and off firm as your your pipeline dictates it's why so many of these what seem to look like very very good MMC businesses have sadly sadly gone to the wall like I think of it I can think of a couple recently so yeah hopefully this goes some way towards solving that and you know we've spoken in recent weeks about the government putting their money behind it last week was the social and affordable homes plan there's the infrastructure investment you know the the education I've seen a number of people getting awarded on frameworks in the last couple of weeks so um so yeah hopefully that all builds certainty and confidence so that that's a tick in that respect um I think one of the things that I'm curious about it is it's mentioning the article and it's something that the parliamentary discussion I attended a few weeks back um had a similar kind of a thing that for some skills you are going to see parts of this plan potentially competing against each other um think of people on interiors and finishing or you think any other number of of kind of skills that aren't they're not tied to house building per se

27:17or they're not you know you you will have interiors and finishing in commercial projects for instance uh trying to get all of these parts of the construction pipeline all moving at the same time on unless we can really really sort of stick the landing on this stuff is just going to it's just going to exacerbate the sort of existing labor problem um so yeah I'd be really really curious to see what that that looks like because we're we're going to end up with increasing interest pretty quickly otherwise aren't we we want to get the economy moving we want the financial benefit of all of this stuff what I can't do so because of the labor market and therefore the cost of labor and so on goes up so it just becomes snakey thing it's on tail so yeah the the detail will be will be fascinating on this I think I can see a lot of good I think the individual strands as I said earlier that we looked at all make absolute sense but seeing how that all mits together to be a cohesive plan on a local as you say whether it's around new towns or you know towns per se probably something will come on to an hour in our final piece but um yeah I'll be very interested to see how

28:19that all how that all mits together across the piece final final thing for me is you'd like to think that in talking about this that that Matthew Penny Cook isn't isn't isn't just being or isn't talking political speak because there's a few sound bites that okay this it's kind of time to deliver now the first one is he says the delivery vehicles and the approach to each of these sites is going to be very very site specific when he's talking about new towns now is he saying like well we're going to take our time on this which he does but like is he giving himself a bit of breathing space or early going into that n-degree and the final point that he makes is that we will take the time to go through things belt and braces never like that phrase to be fair he said this is too important to get wrong that's now as soon as a politician usually says those swathets it's usually alarm bells starting in uh what he's right it's too important to get wrong but the

29:21fact that he said that shows the height of importance and that this isn't just a we need jobs for the industry it seems to be that these threads are being tied together and there is confusion well and we know devolution is going to be not just for construction but for the government more generally devolution is going to be at the heart of this I think that that feels consistent as well rather than a one size fits all you know here is your recruitment strategy and here is your new town strategy and so on the yeah what does the labor market look like in that particular location what skills are required what's available from manufacturing point of view what does the education system look like in that area that I think it's grown up to take a look at things on a region by region basis and see how mature those things are and what the requirements are and then back to skills if there is a shortage of a particular you know skill within that area then you are right so to pay more money to acquire that from other places all that's where things become

30:21more competitive and good on the people that have those skills and can play the market that way but um it's well we said this months ago Pete didn't we with this new government with previous governments and different policies that there's so many things to fix at once that I don't envy them in some respects um but they've got to make it as easy as possible I want the things that worry me a little bit in um so I'm trying to find that they actually quote here from from Penny Cook is talking about a package for you here it is yeah now far more comprehensive package of support from government um I'm hoping that doesn't mean just money um you know it did I want well some employees particularly on the SME end of things you know any kind of anything that makes a entry level or a junior or a trainer in a apprentice position more affordable again in isolation maybe there's no bad thing um but I can put personal biases here I do feel the government probably needs to be more interventionist and look at this in a more holistic cross sex away rather than just we'll make it slightly more affordable for you to take on an apprentice of some description

31:25I'm not saying that is what he's suggesting by the way but yeah generally speaking whenever I hear a politician talk about package and making things easier it kind of feels like book pushing and it feels like they'll find a sum of money that sounds impressive on paper but the actual sort of impact behind it tends not to be as massive as it perhaps should be so cynicism over um yeah we'll um individual constituent parts all up great um I think a lot of what he's talking about in his sound bites all sound fine let's see what the detail looks like yeah talking talking detail final headline um if we ever featured a think tank on destruction disrupted we must have I've mentioned yeah I've definitely I've self aggrandizing and I'm plugging things that I've involved in but um yeah Fabian's society and and Center for Social Justice I think I mentioned their report a while back that I was cited in so yeah probably only when I've been inflating my

32:28on e-go mate I don't think we've actually covered anything that they're any of them have published outside of that and there's a few sorted there is I think I'm lying no I know anyway final headline is from building and this is hand network rail lunch to metro mares I just don't really sound like a good theme park does it um to speed it to speed up housing delivery around train stations think tank tells government so Center for Cities is saying that matching housing density around stations as can be seen in France and Japan could reduce UK housing shortages by 25 percent I don't think this is the last time we're going to see metro mares mentioned over the next 12 to 18 months or maybe even 10 years if he gets his full tenure that he would like but

33:28yeah it very much seems that metro mares are very very much in fashion at this moment in time but what's your thought on giving them more control over the land that is is part of their jurisdictions to get some houses um well what was funny we were talking before we started recording for the benefit of listeners about our controversial or not do you be with these things in order to be politically correct and and look after the day job um so well we're three stories in so there's only four four fourteen thousand people still I don't worry about it um well I'll change names to protect the innocent I think I have friends and and colleagues that I could mention that if you suggested the network rail having any more responsibility for anything would would bulk at your idea um so let me let me leave that there and move on um it's an interesting one to be honest with you I would particularly wear that these comparative points we've looked at other international surveys previously on on

34:30how the UK stacks up and so I always find it fascinating I think we're so focused on delivery in this country and so I'll put from government in this country understandably so yeah I do find it fascinating where we have these comparative points for anyone that's missed this I mean in a nutshell other nations seem to be much better at deploying land around these transport hubs um obviously France and Japan as you say Peter the ones that are held up here um yeah I haven't realised that it wasn't an issue and again maybe um you know I live in I live in the commuter bell it feels like the town I live in doesn't have an awful lot of its own industry and therefore it's reasonably well served from a transport point of view um yeah but any any listen this listen to this for a while we'll know I work in central Manchester which again is it highlights in the report actually as one of the cities that the books the wider UK trended terms of density of population in and around um transport hubs and train stations and so on but yeah we're we're not even close to be competitive with those other nations that one of the things

35:31that jumped out to me was Britain's 12 largest cities are missing 1.2 million homes around in a city stations compared with their equivalent cities in France and Japan and again there's a certain 1.5 million target that we we may have referenced previously I can't recall um 1.2 millions of decent chunk of that you were where we've kind of um we've complained a little bit about some of the other policy interventions from government that not not least last week the social and affordable homes plan stuff that you know 73,000 units doesn't feel an awful lot given the kind of targets we're chasing well 1.2 million does and I'm not for a second suggesting that you handle with this lantern that we're really all in all of a sudden you know hey prestel they're still the same viability concerns cost concerns and our labor concerns that they're determined how quickly those things can be built but yeah even just to reach parity with those nations it clearly it's possible you know we're not talking about something that there's a purely theoretical thing and may or may not work you know interesting copying their model to some degree feels like we would unlock an awful lot of um an awful lot of housing and but back for you saying earlier

36:33Pete as well on on new towns that yeah they're clearly it makes sense that whether it's a devolved basis which seems the most likely off from a national point of view but having a lock step and transport and housing strategy to some degree um makes an awful lot more sense how are these new towns going to to be served by public transport infrastructure for instance you know it's not just going to be surely it's not just going to be pick a semi-rural area and drop 21,000 housing units on it and and kind of a way you go so yeah you've got a chance with those new towns I think to um to start from scratch and all things being equal what would be the ideal way of delivering this but yeah also looking in and around back current transport infrastructure and you know assess how we utilising that space as well as possible you know the report says not well yeah fascinating that there are other countries that we can we can see the examples from and and take some best practice and yeah they can a lot one put two million homes and I'd say it's certainly worth exploring yeah for sure I think the barriers that we've

37:35were coming up against here for me they seem quite easy to overcome so what what the the piece describes is low density development and fragmented land ownership as a major blocker and then land around the station sits undeveloped for a long time well that seems if we're going to move this this ownership or who's who's looking after this and pushing it forward then those two things seem to just eradicate quite quite quickly yes so what it's saying is that London could gain over 500,000 homes from this along with Glasgow nearly 200,000 a manchester just over a hundred and and thirty thousand uh along with other other cities but they seem to be the the main main ones were who you can get better like you said the the commuter belt better public transport because you're going to need that for the amount of people make that more efficient shorter

38:36commutes as well and and what does that do it expands our labour market into the places that we probably need to to push that labour into well yeah when we know generally speaking that I think is the first urban flight as in back into the cities it's it's highest point for a century and doesn't show any signs of stopping that's kind of if you look you zoom out and look at things from a wider stop population point of view that that is what's happening is the urban centres are growing much faster than their suburban equivalents are their rural equivalents so yeah you you meet the market where the where the demand is I thought again your stompy ground be Liverpool and and Sheffield interesting the population density is happening away from transport hubs at the minute which it is a fascinating thing and I'm sure it's a trend that we could book yeah for sure I mean the and I think Steve Rotterham's cited in this piece as well who's Liverpool City region mayor

39:37and it he he cited it says it shows there's there's much more we could be doing around the different network dead simple and we want to build on what we've started give this great to control other stations and the land around them and and develop those sites that that are there help us build homes for our residents and transport links around transport links that already exist yeah it makes it it seems common sense for me yeah it do it the ice well and I think I get the the sort of key recommendations from the the centre for cities as well so they're the three key ones fast track network rail land transfers two mares which obviously Steve Rotterham Meta will be going to be going to be up for I should say as well so I was a slight sidebar to that point that would rail currently does develop land for for housing that is happening I think the key point here is these maybe not happening quickly enough for or producing enough units at the minute so this is about how to make the the institutional side of that better rather than suggesting

40:39that they should do it before anyone sort of takes on bridge with that and second recommendation from centre for cities is to use mayoral development corporations to specifically to lead these areas again something that that Burnham and co work within the this sort of GMCA framework had done with we've greater Manchester there's there's specific areas now all traffored for instances being there's a specific mayoral development corporation for that that has its own remit for that area so yeah whether this is the centre for social it's probably centre for cities kind of looking at what might actually be incorporated by government or looking at as you and I have suggested you know what has been rolled out in Greater Manchester and how do we do that at scale that was interesting and using male mayoral development orders to provide faster planning routes which again we can transport land planning and housing altogether into into one sort of network which again it doesn't take a genius to look at what's happening with the devolution agenda and think that there is every chance that that gets incorporated so yeah this doesn't feel like

41:43think tank just kind of throwing our ideas that are beneficial to its members or its funders or you know it feels like stuff that does have a reasonable fighting chance of being taken seriously which yeah I think makes makes absolutely sense yeah so I think with all these headlines we've seen the bit of cohesion it even very much feels or that's the that's what I'm sensing so let's try and do two cohesive takeaways I think let me go first to my simple that's not as a mean that a wheel in a lot of these things it's just thinking a bit more pragmatic that's way to do things and more importantly start to do them and move them forward so my takeaway is yeah a bit of pragmatic thinking but we don't have to be revolutionary in these things and most times it isn't it's just those incremental tweaks that all change things I've completely agree man it's related so there you go we are we are cohesive on that I think simplification is is your friend and I think that that's one of my

42:50miles of Asians in in recent years and one of my concerns at the minute is that yeah lots lots of good things but if we kind of zoom into close to them then we're going to miss the bigger picture and I think in a lot of cases there are things where where interests align or at the very least some consideration needs to be taken for for other parts of the sector or the parts of the wide economy and the way that people live their lives and want to live their lives now there is a solution I think in a lot of cases that is mutually beneficial we've just yeah just got to make these things as simple to understand and simple to implement and simple to deliver as possible and I think we can it feels like the will is there and it feels like as you know I've said it several times we can't be the only people observing these things and seeing the way that these things knit together at a certain point so yeah that that that's my my takeaway is the simplicity key with all of this fantastic right I'm off to see the see what park opening times are like the network rail land this week I'm sure there'll be a delay at some point in getting in or at least getting there um as far as

43:55I'll see you next week you will indeed cheers big thank you so much for listening if you have any questions you can find both myself and Ryan on LinkedIn under our names Peter Sumpkin and Ryan Jones remember to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and you won't miss an episode if you want to support this podcast tell a friend colleague audition acquaintance you might want to introduce yourself first if you're going down that route and finally if you could leave us a review that helps others find this podcast which is critical thanks again for listening