Conservatives win 2019 General Election with significant majority
The Conservative Party won the December 12th 2019 General Election with 364 seats in the House of Commons, and Boris Johnson remains UK Prime Minister. The result gave the Conservatives a comfortable majority in Parliament and the power to continue the process of taking the UK out of the European Union.
However, other issues are also on the political agenda. There is to be a continued government focus on achieving the goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In one of his earliest speeches after the result, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that his goal is: “To make this country the cleanest, greenest on Earth with the most far-reaching environmental programme.”
Johnson added: “And you the people of the country voted to be carbon neutral in this election; you voted to be carbon neutral by 2050 and we’ll do it.”
As well as the impact of Brexit, a number of other proposals in the Conservative manifesto look set to impact the building services sector over the next few years.
The Party committed to clamp down on business-to-business payment problems more broadly and to strengthen the powers of the Small Business Commissioner to support small businesses that are exploited by larger partners.
The Conservative election manifesto also made a firm commitment to lower-energy homes, schools and hospitals with £9.2 billion earmarked for investment in efficiency measures. The Conservatives also said they would invest £800 million to build ‘the first fully deployed carbon capture storage cluster by the mid-2020s’.
The result could also have an impact on the domestic construction and refurbishment market. The Conservative Party manifesto outlined plans to build 300,000 homes per year by the mind-2020s, with a simplified planning system and use of modern methods of construction expressly mentioned as key tools to achieve this goal. Government also said it would support ‘smaller builders’.
The Hackitt review was also expressly mentioned in the party’s manifesto, with the removal of unsafe cladding considered a priority.
Johnson picture credit: Ben Shread/Open Government licence V3.0
Houses of Parliament picture credit: Shutterstock:S.Borisov
