6
JANUARY 2016 PRO INSTALLER
PRO NEWS
www.proinstaller.co.uk
FMB is ‘leaner
and smarter’
for 75th
ANNIVERSARY
Dave Bentley took over as National President of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB) just over
a year ago. Since then, the FMB has increased its marketing activities, advised senior government
ministers on the national housing shortage, apprenticeships, access to finance and the growing
skills crisis, and come up with new warranty proposals to tackle illegal cash-in-hand work.
Dave said: “In the last year,
working closely with the
senior management team
led by the Chief Executive Brian Berry, we have
restructured our whole
operation and now it’s
leaner, smarter and fit for
purpose. All departments
have changed. We were not
marketing strongly enough
– a lot of people didn’t even
know us – but now we have
television, radio and magazine campaigns and we’re
on more industry panels.”
The FMB has been liaising with
Greg Clark, Secretary of State for
the Department of Communities
and Local Government, Nick
Boles, Minister of State for the
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Anna Soubry,
Minister for Small Businesses.
Among the issues discussed
is VAT. Dave explained: “Our
members have to charge VAT
at 20%, and this has resulted in
some being offered as much as
£100,000 cash-in-hand to do jobs.
I was thinking how can we get
a situation where everybody is
on a level playing field? We can’t
fight VAT and a black economy.”
He continued: “One idea is a
move to strengthen our offer to
consumers via insurance-backed
warranties. If every job that went
through local authority building
control had to have a 12-month
warranty, that would kill the
black economy overnight. The
warranty would have a name on
it and the cost of the job. Even if
you buy an electric kettle you get
a warranty, so you should have
one for building jobs costing
thousands. How many people
have you seen on Rogue Traders
who would have been grateful, for example, for a two-year
warranty?” Next year, he said, all
work done by FMB members up
to £25,000 would be auto guaranteed but he added: “We have
got to work very hard to get this
through to the consumer.”
The FMB has been invited by
the government to look at the
way it can improve things for its
SME members. Dave said: “The
target in the country is to build
over 200,000 houses a year. Unfortunately, too few small house
builders are delivering the number of homes needed because
they can’t access the finance they
need.”
Another challenge, he said,
was to speed up the planning
system. “We have the manpower to deliver a lot of smaller
developments but builders have
to go through the same planning
system whether they’re developing a 20-acre site or building two
or three houses. It takes an age.
Why do we need to go through
such a long, costly planning
process in cases where the houses are in keeping with what’s
around them and there are no
issues with environment or traffic
access? The government’s reaction to this idea was ‘we’re very
interested’.”
This year, the FMB has also
entered a partnership with the
Local Authority Building Control
(LABC), introduced a marketing
campaign to reach women – who
Dave says, initiate 99% of domestic building jobs – and launched
a new website with its ‘Find a
Builder’ function made simpler.
The website was launched at the
end of October 2015 and already
the ‘Find a Builder’ service has
achieved 25 times more hits each
day.
The FMB is now working
with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) on
addressing skills shortages. Dave
said: “There are some good
grants such as £10,000 through
the three-year training for an
apprentice but even though the
CITB has simplified grant forms,
we still can’t get builders to take
apprentices on.”
On 12th July this year the FMB
celebrates its 75th anniversary,
with a reception at the House of
Lords. Dave said: “When I took
over I made myself a promise
that I would try and change
things, and I hope I’ve managed
to make an impact - the d