Comment | 3


COMMENT


TTJ shares an office with political and cultural magazine The New Statesman, which throws an election night party in central London at every election. I’ve no doubt that this year’s


party held extra significance, with such a sweeping win by Labour making it even more memorable. The chatter would


have gone on late into the evening, people glued to the copious TV screens as the exit polls were released. Journalists, guests and political party representatives I’m sure would have been reaching fever pitch just after 10pm, giving their two penn’orth about what happens next. Of course, the result wasn’t really a surprise, having


been hyped for months before, but we are now looking at a shift in government policies. I don’t think my New Statesman colleagues would have been thinking quite like readers of TTJ about how wood products may or may not benefit in terms of new government policies. I’d hazard a guess they wouldn’t know about Accoya,


CLT, or the ins and out of preservative treatments. But with the uncertainty of elections now behind us


and the new government’s quick fire announcements on housebuilding and planning, it does look like there could be major upsides for the offsite timber construction sector in the next three years. Whether it’s the tried and tested open frame panels,


advanced closed panels or mass timber systems like CLT and glulam, the narrative around low-carbon building, combined with renewed government emphasis on getting Britain building suggest a boost is coming.


GROUP EDITOR www.ttjonline.com


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► TTJ AWARDS SUPPLEMENT Our annual TTJ Awards supplement detailing this year’s event, with information on our sponsors and a look at how this year’s trophies have been manufactured


TTJ – the voice of the timber Industry As laid out in our lead news story on page 6, major


housebuilders like Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey and Barratt Developments have all recently made big commitments to build big new timber frame facilities. Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ commitment to build 1.5


million new homes over the next five years can only increase and expand the investment in the offsite timber build sector, especially as traditional site building skills are in severe shortages. With private housebuilding going through a tougher time in the past year, we could be looking forward to a swing back to greater construction output, assuming all the necessary economic components and geo-politics sort themselves out. In this issue we have our annual focus on timber


construction (pp43-55). In our coverage, the Structural Timber Association


(STA) says timber building is now at the tipping point, in small part by the Timber in Construction Roadmap – published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in December last year – pushing the agenda forward. It seems like the stars are coming into alignment.


Things are rarely simple, but there are certainly reasons to be optimistic about wood use and prospects in the year ahead.


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