Join the Get Britian Building campaign

April 19, 2011 at 1:39 pm

Show your support for the UK construction industry by joining the Get Britian Building campaign today!

http://www.getbritainbuilding.org/signup.asp

The Get Britain Building campaign is a coalition of organisations from within the construction sector who are calling for the creation of a new business environment to help the UK construction industry thrive and prosper in these difficult times.

Spearheaded by British Precast, the Builders Merchants Federation, the Federation of Master Builders and the Modern Masonry Alliance, the campaign focuses on the need to help all those involved in the UK construction industry survive in the current economic downturn, with an emphasis on minimising excessive control, regulation, and taxation.

The campaigns 10 point plan.

  1. Cut VAT from 20 per cent to five per cent for all building repair and maintenance work. Click here to download a report that argues the case for this and demonstrates how a VAT cut has worked on the continent
  2. Develop and implement a coherent strategy to deal with the UK’s existing housing stock, both in terms of helping to create more homes and making the UK’s existing stock more energy efficient
  3. Set targets for all local authorities to fast track the planning process to release and designate land for social housing
  4. Ensure responsible lending to prudent borrowers coupled with the reintroduction of mortgage interest tax relief
  5. Simplify the planning system
  6. Produce an implementation plan to show the precise timings and location of public spending on schools, hospitals and prisons to ensure that projects are completed in 2009 and 2010 respectively
  7. Introduce a section 106 agreement holiday and then subsequently cap the value of section 106 agreements. Abandon the proposed Community Infrastructure Levy
  8. Reduce the regulatory and fiscal burden
  9. Reform stamp duty so that only higher rates of stamp duty apply to the proportion of the house price which is in the relevant band i.e. a graduated tax like income tax
  10. Reintroduce empty property rate relief