London Build Expo 2024

The 'responsible person' and the significance of third party certification were some of the main topics discussed during this panel. It was also mentioned that amendments to the approved document Q and other policy changes will come into effect during the next year.
However, a good counter response from the audience was that these are mostly recommendations for best practice but not yet legal requirements. Therefore, a conclusion was stated that these amendments and additions to Approved Document Q causes confusion in the building sector, with no legislation or inspector supervising the industry, and huge amounts of money are being wasted on recommendations that do not provide concrete guidance for actual safety in the industry.

An emphasis on the importance of the homeless individuals being involved in homelessness studies was brought up during this panel. As a result, the industry would have authentic studies which reflect real needs and challenges that these individuals face in order to inform effective policy recommendations which allow for empowerment and advocacy who are in this vulnerable situation.

Global warming was the main topic addressed during this panel. Current policies presently in place around the world are projected to result in about 2.7°C warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. With the final UK Climate Resilience Roadmap, five new policies are recommended that would potentially bring the projected global warming to down to an 1.8°C increase. Other sustainable measures to tackle issues like overheating were mentioned, like building sufficient power capacity as a passive measure to cool / prevent overheating and not to produce more carbon and prevent the cycle from continuing.
In the spirit of sustainability, no recycling of policies was mentioned, instead mainly new policies were recommended as if they acting in isolation of all of their predecessors.

Edited by Sally H.

The London Build Expo 2024 was a collection of exhibitors and speakers presenting the latest modern methods of construction, while taking sustainability and safety as the main guidelines.
Although most policy makers succeeded in demonstrating how the proposed policies will improve life in a safe and sustainable manner in isolation, they fell short in demonstrating how their policies will blend with the current system of both modern and outdated regulations. This trend of constantly adding new policies without taking out the outdated ones creates suffocation in the UK construction industry. A suffocation which means that it is getting increasingly harder for both commercial and domestic clients to start and finish any project without being overwhelmed by the constant increase of complexity and price. Maybe a better use of taxpayers money would be to implement a practice to remove or update outdated regulations first. This might also help to mitigate the national debt which is now nearing £3 trillion.