The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) has announced a series of new appointments to its board and changes to how it is governed.

The organisation says the governance changes will enable wider representation from construction’s core sectors and the appointment of senior representatives from the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) and the Cabinet Office.

Becky Wood, CEO of NISTA, and Clare Gibbs, director of markets, sourcing and suppliers and the Procurement Review Unit for the Cabinet Office, have both joined the CLC’s board from January.

The CLC says the appointments reflect work to establish more formal relationships across government and aim to ensure the construction industry has stronger links with the departments that shape the business environment within which the sector operates.

Mark Farmer has joined the board as the industry sponsor for people and skills, taking over from Tim Balcon, who has been delivering the role in an interim capacity during 2025. Balcon will continue as Farmer’s deputy moving forward. Farmer has also joined the Construction Skills Mission Board.

Karl Whiteman, executive director for the Berkeley Group, will take on an additional brief as industry sponsor for health, safety and wellbeing, reflecting the more active role the CLC will be taking to integrate this area, across all its workstreams, following publication of the CLC’s Health, Safety and Wellbeing Strategy in 2025 and the successful Health Safety and Wellbeing  summit in July 2025.

The expanded board will include a representative from each of the CLC’s four strategic workstreams and, for the first time, the four industry sector groups:

• Infrastructure: Janet Young, director general and secretary of the Institution of Civil Engineers
• Housing: Neil Jefferson, CEO of the Home Builders Federation
• Domestic repair, maintenance and improvement: Anna Scothern, CEO of the National Home Improvement Council
• Places, assets and commissioning: Mark Robinson, CEO of SCAPE

At the same time, Richard Robinson, regional president AMEA for AtkinsRéalis, will be standing down as deputy co-chair of the CLC to focus more time on his role with AtkinsRéalis. The CLC will announce a process to appoint his replacement shortly.

Members of the board will play an active role in the development of a refreshed CLC Strategy and Biennial Report in March.

The new strategy aims to align the objectives of the industry with the government’s significant ambitions for the delivery of infrastructure and the built environment; particularly the construction of 1.5m new homes, the Clean Energy 2030 mission and the approval of 150 new infrastructure projects by the end of the Parliament.

Mark Reynolds, executive chair of Mace Group and co-chair of the CLC, said: “The CLC’s new governance reflects the increasingly central role of the industry to the government’s bold ambitions for the industry – and the need to make sure that every major sector has a voice.

“More than ever, every part of our industry has a role to play if we are to deliver the economic growth, housing and infrastructure delivery and job creation we so  desperately need.

“Over the last three years the CLC has played a crucial role in convening industry and government and finding solutions for shared problems. The publication of both the refreshed  CLC Strategy and the Construction Industry Workforce Plan in the first quarter of 2026 will set out a clear route forward for the ongoing transformation of our industry.”