Who Gets to Build?: Should Contractors Need a Licence?
The timing of this book is not accidental.
In the years following the Grenfell Tower fire, the Building Safety Act and subsequent dutyholder and competence reforms have fundamentally changed the way the construction industry talks about responsibility, competence and organisational capability. With contractor licensing now part of the live policy debate, one question has become increasingly difficult to avoid:
Should contractors need a licence?
At first, the answer can seem obvious. Almost anyone can establish a construction business, yet contractors can be entrusted with buildings worth millions of pounds and responsibilities carrying enormous consequences.
But look more closely and British construction is not an ungated industry at all.
Competence cards. Accreditations. Approved supply chains. Frameworks. Financial checks. Trade memberships. Statutory duties. Specialist licences. Prequalification. Client approval.
Construction already spends an extraordinary amount of time deciding who is competent enough to build.
The gates exist. They are simply spread across the market.
In Who Gets to Build?, Thomas Marriner examines the system from inside the construction industry and asks a more difficult question than whether licensing sounds like a good idea:
Who should own the gate - and licensed for what?
Moving from domestic building work to major commercial construction and Principal Contractor responsibility, the book explores:
why Britain developed without a universal contractor licence;how construction already controls access through private and statutory competence gates;what qualifications, cards and accreditations actually prove - and what they do not;the difference between competent people and capable organisations;why becoming a contractor is easy while becoming a contractor trusted with serious responsibility is much harder;what licensing could improve;what it could cost, duplicate or distort;how other industries and jurisdictions control permission to operate; andwhether different levels of construction responsibility require different levels of permission.This is not a campaign for universal licensing, and it is not another guide to the Building Safety Act. It tests the strongest arguments both for and against greater statutory control.
For readers of Thomas Marriner's earlier books, it continues the thread: responsibility, control, the contractor, the promise - and now permission. For everyone else, it stands alone.
A timely contribution to one of the most important debates facing modern construction, and essential reading for contractors, directors, construction managers, consultants, clients, regulators and anyone responsible for deciding who should be trusted to build.
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