IWFM welcomes new government into office

News

In the light of the Labour Party’s comprehensive victory in the general election, IWFM has welcomed the incoming government and reiterated its calls for dialogue on issues seen as critical by the Institute’s membership.

IWFM chief executive Linda Hausmanis said: “We congratulate the winning party and look forward to working with the new government on its agenda for change. The critical workplace and facilities management (WFM) sector is perfectly placed to help the government meet so many of its own objectives for the UK. 

“We hope we can help the new government govern on the issues it campaigned on, in particular growing the economy and developing a coherent plan to achieve Net Zero. These are issues our members can impact and where they tell us they want government to deliver.

“Working to address these key priorities should help create the conditions to support people with the cost of living and reduce uncertainty around government policy, including on skills.”

Head of Policy and Research, Sofie Hooper, who compiled IWFM’s ‘Priorities for the next government’ document, focused on the skills aspect of the government’s agenda.

”In our government priorities paper, we spoke about the pace of digital technological change and the skills needed to optimise the opportunity the WFM sector has to contribute to the economy as a whole. 

“The growth potential within our sector has been stymied by a lack of skills as organisations cannot deliver more and better services. The pace of change, and the skills needed to harness these new opportunities for growth, are issues that should be central to the new government’s implementation of its industrial strategy. Such strategy should really bake in long-term thinking with ‘just’ transitions, which then allows businesses to play their part in building a fairer society where all can succeed.”

“Labour has spoken about its plans to broaden the Apprenticeship Levy into a ‘Growth and Skills’ Levy, with organisations able to use a percentage of their levy contributions to fund training through routes other than apprenticeships. We look forward to engaging on how this policy can be enacted to benefit our members and, crucially, encourage people to enter our sector. This flexibility is something we have long called for. We hope the new government will take bold and meaningful action to tackle the very real skill shortage in our critical sector.”

And Communications and Insight Director Jenny Thomas spoke of the WFM sector’s wider environmental reach.

“Across the wider sustainability agenda, our new government should lead the way by showing what good looks like through the government estate and pushing learnings through the government supply chain. And it should use good procurement practice to really drive social value and environmental outcomes throughout the public estate.

”In our ‘Priorities for the next government’ paper, we also called for the incoming administration to use the planning system to develop broader incentives for deep retrofit projects while also ensuring that new-build buildings meet the highest environmental standards.

"Labour put 'change' at the centre of its campaign – while we know that change will be slow because there is no money in the kitty, certainty and cohesion of plans will go a long way towards realising much-anticipated change.”

IWFM’s ‘Priorities for the next Government’ document can be found here.