ABSTRACT
This situation partly reflected the difficult relationships between the professional bodies and the representative organisations of the contractors. The latter rapidly identified the Latham review as signing the death warrant for the old dispensation, whereby what was known as the ‘main contractor’, who inevitably was the principal in the traditional forms of contract with the client, controlled the supply side and their methods of delivery to the client. The Secretary of State in the Department of the Environment at the time of the commissioning of the review, Michael Howard, and his ministers with overall responsibility for the Governments’ contacts with the industry, Sir George Young and Tony Baldry, had identified the industry’s poor relationship with Government, and worse relationships with its own constituent parts, as the major weaknesses requiring solution if there was to be any hope of lasting improvement in performance. The Latham review overwhelmingly endorsed this, but the review itself could only expose the scene and offer possible ways ahead, implementation of which had to be in the industry’s own hands.
