The Building Climate
The things that are wrong with the British building industry have been enumerated fairly frequently, but never quite so thoroughly as in the repoist of the Working Party on Building, published this week. Its authors conclude that there is a great deal to be done in improving working efficiency, in making a more economical use of labour and materials and in planning building work. The essential distinction is made between genuine planning of work and the stultifying collection of controls and programmes which in Government circles passes for planning. The Working Party's recommendations, if adopted, could no doubt do something. to remove the often imprecise complaints of a general public which can see for itself that there is a great deal wrong with British building, but since all questions of wages and conditions—a term which, of course, covers restrictive practices by building workers— were outside its terms of.reference the Working Party cannot remove them altogether. Indeed, no set of recommendations, however clearly and frankly phrased, could do that. The fundamental factor, affecting every part of the industry, is the will to work hard. The impressive report, also published this week, of the Productivity Team on Building which recently visited the U.S.A. gets to the real root of the matter when it includes at the end of its list of main factors accounting for the great speed and low cost of American constructional work " the nation-wide stimulus of the American industrial climate." No committee can provide that stimulus. But now that the ragged-trousered philanthropists who once provided the building industry with its pool of un- employed men are no more, perhaps the self-respect of the men who work in it may counsel them to give of their best.
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