Builders Merchants Journal – BMJ Publishing to Builders Merchants and the UK merchanting industry for more than 95 years
The chief executive of builders merchant Travis Perkins is the new chairman of construction industry organisation the Construction Products Association.
Speaking at the association’s autumn lunch, where he replaced outgoing chairman Bill Bolsover, Geoff Cooper praised the Government’s industrial strategy as an “important opportunity for the industry”.
He also said that cutting current spending should have been the government’s priority, rather than the cuts to capital spending and that he would be willing to work with the Department for Business in areas where the CPA can make a difference.
Cooper said that industrial policy should be removed from tampering by politicians to combat the effect of new government administrations with each electoral cycle.
He said: “What happens is loads of valuable work is done and then a new administration comes in and all of that work gets blown off course and we change direction once again.”
He said that this has happened with monetary policy and that any industrial strategy needed the same separation.
