The UK's changing research base for construction

The impact of recent government policy. Factors are identified which may destabilize the capacity and capability of the UK construction R&D base. Recent government policy on construction R&D in the UK is presented as having been a contradictory amalgam involving, simultaneously, government intervention and disengagement. Confusingly, both parts of the policy appear to have been aimed at the same purpose - increasing the responsiveness of the sector's R&D activities to market forces. Given the noted reluctance of the UK's private sector to assume responsibility for such activities over the past two decades, there is little to suggest that this policy will prove successful. A more likely outcome, in the short to medium term at least, is that the speed and extent of apparent government retreat from funding could, in combination with other current changes, destabilize both the capacity and the capability of Britain's construction R&D base.