British Woodworking Federation (BWF) president Roy Wakeman told the BWF’s annual Members Day at Loughborough University that reducing VAT from the current 20% to 5% was a sound way to boost the construction sector, including joinery firms, and was backed up by good maths. About 70% of the joinery sector’s work, he added, was in the refurbishment/improvement market.
“We need a low VAT rate to convert the black economy,” Mr Wakeman said. “We need to get the government to wake up about this.”
Diana Montgomery, chief executive of the Construction Products Association (CPA), told BWF members that Treasury officials were nervous about change and risk.
Despite the CPA’s lobbying on VAT, she said the Treasury did not appear convinced the estimated £2bn cost of cutting the tax would be retrieved through an expected boost in overall extensions and improvement work.
BWF chief executive Iain McIlwee told members it was frustrating that the government has not done more to boost the housing industry.
Elsewhere at Members Day, described as the “best ever” by Mr Wakeman, BWF members got to grips with pressing issues, including the looming July 1 deadline for CE marking, the EU Timber Regulation and imminent Building Regulations changes.
The American Hardwood Export Council showed how US temperate hardwoods, when heat-treated and laminated, offered significant potential for the manufacture of high quality timber windows.
On the Building Regulations front, members heard that an announcement on an update to Part L is expected to be published in May, with implementation likely either in the autumn or next spring.
Keynote speaker architect Andrew Waugh inspired members by charting how nine-storey cross-laminated timber apartment project Murray Grove had changed building practices, speeded up construction and delivered an environmentally-friendly low carbon building in London.
(TTJ will be covering the BWF Members Day in more detail in a future issue)
