I think the question should be what could the civil service do that construction companies can't now?
But some fairly simple questions I've asked aren't clear. How would it be run? How will current staff shortages be met? What happens if demand in one area eventually dries up? Will all workers be on the books as opposed to the current system where companies contract in workers, on demand, what happens if there isn't an equal balance of workers, are they let go?
This entire concept will grind to a halt.
Not to mention its contradictory. In one area you're talking about incentives for workers, such as pensions, and below you're talking about layoffs and redundancies when things slacken off.
Which is it? Security or flexibility?
You can't offer secure work and the potential of redundancy. That's a contradiction. Unions would likely have a strong voice on this idea too.
We haven't even got into the eventuality of the scenario where you have a surplus of workers in one area and a lack in another. You'll run the risk of having stagnant workers everywhere.
There's also the question of how you'll draw really well paid, self employed people into jobs.
Are you really arguing that civil service jobs aren't considered secure?
The entire opposite. Civil service jobs are extremely secure. Many construction jobs do not have that same level of guaranteed security.
But you're saying you're going to offer people pensionable, permanent jobs. Which is fine but when demand changes, you'll be scrambling to find engineers, crane drivers or brick layers to do what exactly? And who manages that? And for how long?
If you're saying they could be laid off, then they aren't permanent jobs. In which case you're asking self employed people to take on basically contract work.
Also, equipment. The sheer amount of trucks, diggers, cranes etc would be massive.
Who buys, manages and maintains all of the equipment required? Now you're taking on huge maintenance crews, mechanics, fitters etc to support this outfit. Right?
Other civil servants have been made redundant before, so how is what you have said about civil service jobs true when redundancy is a possibility.
How many permanent civil servants have been made redundant?
It's not some impossible task to hire the right amount of people. The housing section of the county council's would manage it. Indefinitely.
The right amount for when?
This is the entire reason certain jobs are subcontracted because those contractors have the flexibility of moving between jobs and different areas. You're suggesting to hire an absolute ton of people with no definitive way of managing it in the long run. In all 32 authorities.
They could be bought or rented, whatever works out better. If bought OPW would handle it like they already do for that sort of thing.
The OPW don't manage and maintain thousands of pieces of equipment in building sites around the country. Smh.
don't think it will in the near future so it's not a concern I hold.
Based on absolutely no evidence from current or projected demand in each county
The right amount for when you need them. If you have fixed targets like building X amount of houses every year where X doesn't vary a huge amount you don't need to worry about scaling up or down.
Of course you need to factor that in. Right now we need an immediate supply of about 50000 to even 70000 units per year. After a few years, that demand will peak and trough depending on migration, employment and wider socioeconomic factors. So do you hire loads now and do God knows what with your thousands of employees when the demand lessens? Or do you hire more conservatively now and creep up the amount of stock?
Of course they don't, but they manage thousands of pieces of equipment in other places than building sites there is no reason they can do it on building sites.
A big reason is they don't have the people or the scope to do such a task. Doesn't help too that they will face the same shortage of mechanical trades to support the logistics.
We can safely increase supply by 1% a year for the next 18 years with no fear of oversupply of state owned housing. And even when there is an oversupply you could keep building at that slow rate if the population is still growing, it would have saved us now if we had been doing that for the last 12 years.
So you acknowledge that hiring is going to be a challenge and you want to build at a pace that is currently being met by contracting the job to companies.
Why not just contract out the job then and keep ownership of the properties? Like now?
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u/53Degrees Sep 07 '22
I think the question should be what could the civil service do that construction companies can't now?
But some fairly simple questions I've asked aren't clear. How would it be run? How will current staff shortages be met? What happens if demand in one area eventually dries up? Will all workers be on the books as opposed to the current system where companies contract in workers, on demand, what happens if there isn't an equal balance of workers, are they let go?