{"id":502491,"date":"2024-07-17T12:55:52","date_gmt":"2024-07-17T11:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=502491"},"modified":"2024-07-17T15:01:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T14:01:32","slug":"snap-analysis-who-are-the-winners-from-the-kings-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/government\/snap-analysis-who-are-the-winners-from-the-kings-speech-17-07-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Snap analysis: Who are the winners from the King’s Speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Smith is news editor at <\/strong><\/em>Construction News<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s King\u2019s Speech has been used as an opportunity to differentiate between both the previous administration and the Blair era.<\/p>\n

New ministerial teams don\u2019t know the full extent of their inheritance yet and are still working through the detail of plans.<\/p>\n

So rather than deliver policies that won\u2019t survive the first skirmishes, today was about signals of intent.<\/p>\n

And as a side payoff, there were no detailed media briefings to favoured outlets. MPs got the statement first in a return to convention. The new era isn\u2019t government-by-press-release.<\/p>\n

Who won?<\/h3>\n

In the short-term, it\u2019s the developers that can get sites ready quickly and the consultants who can turn broad proposals into clear, visualised plans.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t an accident that the first big photocall was with the regional mayors. They emerge as one of the chief beneficiaries today. But the price comes later. They will have to deliver homes and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

This helps regional firms that don\u2019t have lobbying teams established in Westminster.<\/p>\n

A critical factor will be the informal relationships between regional mayors and ministers who had already been either supporting or working on regeneration projects in their areas and are now in Whitehall departments.<\/p>\n

Henri Murison, chief executive of Northern Powerhouse Partnership, said: \u201cThere is a clear path for Angela Rayner and her team including Jim McMahon MP to keep the North on the right path and help the rest of the nation follow our example.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the test is in joining up all the supporting elements needed to actually get shovels in the ground: skills, materials and money.<\/p>\n

One senior government minister told CN<\/em> that a critical issue will be getting Whitehall to rethink how it oversees infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\u201cHS2 is a textbook case of how not to do it,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Local government needs more than fine words \u2013 recruiting 300 planners is difficult enough in the current hiring climate but even that number will not be enough after more than a decade of redundancies.<\/p>\n

How does the government deliver both housing and net-zero-friendly energy infrastructure when there aren\u2019t currently enough people to do it? The hard work starts here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Smith is news editor at Construction News Today\u2019s King\u2019s Speech has been used as an opportunity to differentiate between both the previous administration and the Blair era. New ministerial teams don\u2019t know the full extent of their inheritance yet and are still working through the detail of plans. So rather than deliver policies that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149995,"featured_media":502490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false},"categories":[565,39314],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n