BUSINESS HELPDESK
HELP DESK
MEMBER PRIORITIES
The annual BMF Member Survey reflects their priorities for the coming year. BMF marketing manager, Jeremy Harris, explains how the insights provided into members’ current concerns and mid-term challenges assist the BMF in supporting those areas.
WITH LITTLE INDICATION of the government’s desired growth in housing and infrastructure projects taking place until much later in 2025, our latest member survey revealed that most expect negative factors to have a greater impact than positive ones throughout the year. Against this backdrop, the BMF’s influence with the government is highly regarded by members, with 68% considering it an essential service. Lobbying was rated as critical to great value by 79% of respondents.
Unsurprisingly, changes to NIC rates – introduced in April 2025 – emerged as the primary negative impact. The reduction of Business Property Relief for Inheritance Tax (IHT) is a further concern for the many family-owned businesses within our membership. The BMF is working alongside Family Business UK, which represents 160,000 family-owned businesses in multiple sectors to lobby the Chancellor, detailing the potential impact on the economy and calling for a full and formal consultation on the proposed changes to IHT.
Our role within the
Construction Leadership Council, notably as co-chair of the Materials Supply Chain Group is another example of the power of collaborative working. While product availability and forecasts for supply and demand remain an important element of the Group’s work, its discussions and reports include broader issues affecting the supply chain. The reports are all shared with government departments and have been used in briefings to ministers and MPs. Shifting from the immediate to
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the medium term, the anticipated effects of skills shortages are becoming an increasingly pressing concern for members, ranking third in their list of negative impacts, up from fifth in last year’s survey.
The BMF Board recognised the importance of this issue to the future success of our industry some time ago, investing time and financial resources to develop a major sector awareness programme, BMCareers, which is already having an impact in helping to develop understanding about the Building Materials industry and attract a broader range of talent.
Seventy-one per cent of respondents consider raising the profile of the building materials sector and attracting new recruits as critical or of great value. BMCareers serves as a
platform for all BMF members, not just merchants, and aims to involve everyone and leverage the investment to support the future of building materials and benefit from our largest-ever investment to secure the future of building materials. Addressing the skills issue will be essential, as construction activity ramps up from the current low base to meet the delivery of new homes and infrastructure at the heart of the government’s growth agenda. Moving onto positive impacts, 75% of respondents ranked digitisation of the supply chain as the strongest positive factor in this year’s survey, a significant increase from our 2024 survey when 58% anticipated the positive impacts of time and cost saving brought about by streamlining processes. The BMF has supported the
process of digitalisation for building materials for several years with initiatives such as ETIM and BMF Product Data Templates to classify and standardise technical product data. Leading on from this, the BMF recently announced the formation of a non-profit joint venture company with NMBS to develop an Industry Data Pool (IDP).
Managed by Building Materials Digital Services Ltd, the IDP represents a significant step forward in our mission to drive digital transformation across the building materials industry, providing a centralised, scalable, and secure platform to improve data quality, reduce duplication, and simplify how suppliers and merchants exchange product information. BMJ
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net June 2025
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