Call for evidence: Developing a strategy for the built environment professions, trades and occupations
Contribute to CIAT's response
This update provides more information on how you can contribute to CIAT’s response the UK government’s ongoing call for evidence for a strategy for built environment professions, trades and occupations, which is open until 12 August 2026.
Background
The government launched this call for evidence to inform the development of a new, long-term strategy, which aims to cover all professions, trades and occupations in the built environment sector, to be published in Spring 2027. It seeks to understand what is working well in the sector, and what changes might be needed to deliver a well-functioning system where buildings are safe, high-performing and sustainable; individuals and organisations are enabled to thrive; and the building system is trusted. It considers six core themes
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Skills, knowledge, experience and capability
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Behaviours, conduct and culture
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Accountability and personal responsibility
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System infrastructure
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Interdependencies
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Practical actions for reform
The professions strategy itself will focus on England, but it is likely to have broader implications across the UK, including informing ongoing discussions about professional regulation, protection of functions, and the creation of a more level playing field for building design professionals. Ensuring that CIAT’s membership and the wider architectural technology discipline and profession are well represented in this strategy is vital so that any resulting policy enables appropriately competent professionals to undertake safety critical work on a fair and even basis.
Government is explicitly asking for evidence-based responses, to build a strategy which reflects the experiences of practising professionals. So we need your help to build a robust evidence base and an impactful response.
Get involved – survey and workshops
We are seeking your input through two key routes:
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a survey, to gather quantitative evidence and data to inform CIAT’s response,
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a series of workshops, to capture qualitative evidence (i.e., member and affiliate experiences and case studies), to better illustrate CIAT’s response.
Our aim is that our response reflects the full breadth of experiences found across CIAT’s membership. We therefore strongly encourage all members and affiliates to respond to the survey, which we have made as brief as possible. The survey will close for responses on 20 July.
We also encourage members and affiliates to attend one of the online workshops if possible. In the first instance, we are organising four workshops, of which two will be held outside working hours to enable the fullest participation and we are open to arranging further workshops if there is high demand (or to rearranging workshops if specific times or dates are not popular).
The workshop dates will be as follows:
Please register for your preferred workshop via the links above.
To enable full participation, we ask attendees read at least sections 1 and 2 of the call for evidence document (Introduction and About this call for evidence), which can be found here.
The workshops and survey will inform a central CIAT response. In addition, we intend to develop a short membership briefing, to support individuals to respond to the consultation directly.
Learn more
More information on the call for evidence can be found here.
Government is also organising two short briefing webinars, which will provide an introduction to the strategy and the purpose, structure and content of the call for evidence. There will also be a Q&A session to answer any questions about the call for evidence. You can sign up for either of the two webinars (which will cover the same topics), via the following links:
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18 June, 10:00-11:00: MHCLG Webinar 1
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22 June, 12:00-13:00: MHCLG Webinar 2
Finally, in reading the consultation document, you may note that paragraph 5.15, the only paragraph to explicitly identify individual professions, mentions “architects, architectural technicians, fire engineers and engineers of different specialisms”, without referencing Chartered Architectural Technologists or other architectural technology professionals. We have raised concerns about this directly with MHCLG. The department has acknowledged that the decision to refer to architectural technicians rather than Chartered Architectural Technologists is odd but has assured us that the list is not intended to be exhaustive, and that they are very keen to hear from the architectural technology professionals.