At the beginning of the year the British Woodworking Federation (BWF) set out its aims and ambitions for 2020, with a robust plan for supporting the growth of the woodworking and joinery manufacturing industry. It focused on the key issues facing our sector – boosting technical expertise, apprenticeships and skills, tackling challenges associated with Brexit, and championing the use of timber among key audiences and politicians.

Unfortunately, the year so far has looked very different to how anyone envisaged. However, as a trade association our focus hasn’t changed – we’ve been here, as always, to support our fantastic industry and ensure it continues to thrive and seize new opportunities, even when conditions are tough.

In March, when the Covid-19 crisis fully took hold, we moved rapidly to focus on protecting our members’ businesses and their valued employees. We developed a range of resources, including joinery workshop operating safety guidance, to help members navigate the shutdown. And once the financial impact of the crisis on our members became apparent, we took the significant step of suspending all current BWF membership fees for a 12-week period.

While the next six months, or longer, will be shaped by how the pandemic unfolds, several major opportunities for the woodworking sector exist that I know our members have the expertise and drive to seize. Particularly, the government’s commitment to ‘build back greener’ puts sustainable building at the heart of the UK’s recovery plans and creates an environment where timber comes into its own. This is supported by the Construction Leadership Council’s ‘Roadmap to Recovery’, where a key priority is reducing carbon emissions and improving the sustainability and resource efficiency of the construction and built environment sectors. As your trade association we’ll be working to maximise this opportunity for the woodworking and joinery manufacturing industry, and will focus on several key areas in supporting members.

Putting Wood at The Top of the Agenda

Essential to supporting the post-Covid-19 recovery for our industry will be the ‘Six Point Blueprint for Wood’, which we launched in January. This outlines the BWF’s key commitments to boosting demand for wood and wood products, and supporting skills in our industry:

  1. Unleashing the potential of the woodworking and joinery manufacturing industry by ensuring wood is the sustainable product of choice in the construction industry.
  2. Plugging the skills and training gap by ensuring further education colleges and training providers deliver practical qualifications, and that National Skills Fund investments are fully accessible to SMEs and support the training of technical trainers and assessors.
  3. Launching our newly updated WOW I MADE THAT! education programme to inspire students over woodworking and joinery manufacturing industry opportunities.
  4. Enshrining independent third-party certification for the manufacture and installation of fire doors and other passive fire protection products into the Building Safety Bill.
  5. Ensuring the Fire Safety Bill includes provisions and resources for the effective enforcement of the updated Fire Safety Order, clarifies the role of the responsible person for fire door specification, procurement, installation, maintenance, inspection and documentation.
  6. Campaigning to reduce the VAT rate from 20% to 5% on all repairs, maintenance and management of residential homes, to stimulate demand.

These commitments will be a central part of our activity over the next six months and we’ll be working with industry partners, including the Confederation of Timber Industries and Build UK, to support members to maximise on these opportunities.

Training and Skills

It’s imperative, especially when our industry faces new challenges, that we continue to focus on training and skills to enable us to grow and innovate, and ensure we are ready to take advantage of new opportunities. To support this, at the BWF we’re building our efforts around four key pillars to boost the development of both new and skilled colleagues:

  • Continuing to support and promote career development within our industry.
  • Supporting apprentices to become work-ready and maintain a qualified workforce.
  • Retaining and developing existing talent through continuous learning.
  • Promoting woodworking and joinery manufacturing to young and future talent.

Our activities in this area see us working closely with employers and the education sector to develop high-quality learning resources – from hands-on practice sessions to online interactive tools – and provide access to first class learning not only for those entering our profession, but for continuous development within our member organisations.

We’re excited to be launching our online Employee Training Hub in August. Designed specifically for woodworking and joinery manufacturing businesses, the Hub will share the essential training course information and will offer sessions covering key skills including safe use of woodworking machinery, online manual handling refresher training as well as on-site National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) qualifications. Additionally, through the BWF Wood Industry Training (WIT) Forum and our funding partners, we help members access funding to support the training needed Before Covid-19’s impact was felt, the BWF was already exploring how we could deliver more courses online for our members and their audiences. This includes the launch of newly refreshed courses in the form of both online and classroom based learning for installation (stairs, windows, fire doors), wood waste management, fire doors and many more.

Preparing for Brexit

While addressing the impact of Covid-19 remains a priority for our sector, we must not lose sight of the need to prepare for Brexit, especially the eventuality that the UK leaves the EU without a deal. This would have serious implications for the woodworking and joinery manufacturing sector, with a potential increase in the cost of raw materials, as well as confusion surrounding CE Marking.

We’re working hard with our industry partners including the Timber Trade Federation (TTF) to ensure our members’ voices are heard and that our industry is protected as much as possible from the impact of a no deal Brexit. We stand with the TTF and call on the UK government to secure a fully negotiated trade deal.

Fire Doors

For a number of our members, fire doors are a significant part of their business. The BWF continues with its campaign for the independent third-party certification of fire doors to be enshrined in the Building Safety Bill and the Fire Safety Bill. A key pillar of the Six Point Blueprint for Wood, this would ensure that building owners and specifiers have essential proof of performance of their fire doors as well as key specification information to help with ongoing maintenance and remediation works.

Added to this, we’re also lobbying the government to ensure that the Fire Safety Order clarifies the role of the responsible person for fire door specification, procurement, installation, maintenance, inspection and documentation. This would be a significant step forward in removing ambiguity.

As I write this in July, we’re busy planning for Fire Door Safety Week in September to raise awareness of the crucial role fire doors play in saving lives. The unexpected events of this year may have impacted on the inspection and maintenance of fire doors in buildings across the UK, but we need to ensure that our fire doors remain fit for purpose, which makes the 2020 campaign especially important.

This year could not have been planned for, but I know that our industry has the flexibility and resilience to work together, come out of this stronger and meet what we expect to be increased demand for wood as a sustainable building material.