Another year of "challenging times"

My New Year’s resolution was to be less Will Self and more Will Smith, adopting a more positive outlook for the year ahead – oh, and to take LinkedIn more seriously.

All good intentions, but as we start 2012 we find that the year may have moved on but the sentiment is all too reminiscent of 2008 and on. Having endured one recession we appear to be on the verge of another financial crisis and all the uncertainty that it brings.

We will no doubt be all too soon be re-familiarised with a bunch of clichés that we had hoped to have left behind, from “challenging times” to the need to “right-size” organisations.

Against this backdrop, as an industry we face a number of challenges that risk the success that many have worked hard to deliver over the past two years.

There are some global and Eurozone factors that are out of our control but we can also point to the frustration created by what appears to be UK plc working against our industry and which begs the question of what opportunity do we have to influence this?

The Wood Panel Industries Federation (WPIF) has to be applauded for its Stop Burning Our Trees campaign aimed at raising raise public awareness of the travesty that is the subsidised support of the act of harvesting swathes of UK forests to end up as biomass. In simplistic terms it points to the continuation of a government policy that is so disconnected as to not make sense in achieving its wider ambitions.

We have seen the number of housing starts reduce to levels not witnessed since the 1920s. Given the sweeping cuts initiated from the centre and the resultant lack of confidence, we have to ask where is the ability or appetite to “rebuild” housing starts?

In previous recessions we have effectively spent and built ourselves out of trouble; this new age of austerity does not appear to allow for this and, while any government intervention is welcome, at the moment it appears that only sticking plasters are being offered after the major surgery of cuts.

The prognosis, on this basis, is not great.

We have a number of bodies representing the interests of specific sectors and the industry as whole – the Trussed Rafter Association, UK Timber Frame Association, Timber Trade Federation, WPIF to name but a few – that need to come together to ensure that we have a united voice representing and lobbying on our behalf in these very “challenging times”.

No doubt there will be a grouping on LinkedIn – or some other new media vehicle – created that we can jump on and support in the best interest of our industry.

If nothing else it will help deliver on one New Year’s resolution.