CFA 2025/2026 Membership Year in Review

By Richard Catt, CFA CEO

The CFA’s membership year follows the financial year, running from April 1^st to March 31^st. As such, I felt this was a good opportunity to reflect on what the CFA has been working on and has achieved throughout this past membership year. The leadership and support provided by the CFA strengthens the contract flooring sector and helps members to deliver the high level of service, installation and support which specifiers and main contractors require.

As I have said many times recently, I have never known such a complex and challenging operating environment for the contract flooring sector. Against that backdrop, 2025/2026 has been an exceptionally busy year for us all.

Driving competency forward

Competency has been a defining theme for the CFA this year. Working closely with main contractors through the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) and the Super Sectors Group it convened, we have taken meaningful steps towards shaping the formal regulatory framework that contract flooring will work within in the years ahead. In November, we published our initial guidance ‘Competence in the Flooring Sector‘ to help members understand and comply with the competence-related requirements of the Building Safety Act, which now apply. This is a member-only document that marks the start of a wider programme of support for members as the regulatory landscape evolves.

A year of engagement and networking

Despite the external pressures facing our industry, opportunities for members to come together have remained a real highlight. We successfully delivered our two golf days (North and South) and our ever-popular horse racing events in both Scotland and England. At the end of March, we will be running our Spring Ball in Glasgow. These gatherings continue to strengthen the sense of community and the in-person interaction that I believe are vital to our sector and to the work we undertake. We also ran four Manufacturers & Distributors meetings and three Scottish Committee meetings, each of which feeds valuable insight into our technical, regulatory, and strategic workstreams.

Training, apprenticeships and the future workforce

Training and apprenticeships remain central to our purpose. This year we increased the number of apprentices directly supported by the Flooring Industry Training Association (FITA) to 60 an important milestone. We were also proud to support the launch of the F. Ball Floorsight™ Fitter Apprenticeship Programme, which CFA helped to develop, and FITA now supports. We see this as the first of many initiatives that will broaden access to high-quality flooring apprenticeships across the UK. These developments align strongly with our Future Fitters campaign, which was re-launched in summer 2025 with renewed emphasis on highlighting opportunities for women in flooring, an area where we’ve seen growing interest and engagement.

Publications and technical guidance

Alongside our established suite of publications – the Handbook, Training Guide, and Sustainability Guide – we released a new laminate installation guidance note, another member-only benefit that replaces a British Standard that BSI advised they could no longer support. Work has also begun on guidance for installing floorcoverings such as luxury vinyl tile (LVT) over environments with extensive underfloor heating, where current recommendations create challenges in maintaining appropriate ambient temperatures. CFA has a suite of guidance notes that supports members with best practice guidance for installation.

Lobbying

Improving site conditions, tackling poor payment practices, and addressing withheld retentions have all featured in our lobbying activities this year. We contributed to the Government consultation on payment and retentions, which closed in September. I am quietly confident this will see some changes for the better and a response from Government is expected soon. Our site conditions survey went out to members in December 2025, and the findings will inform further engagement with main contractors throughout 2026. In what has been a volatile political and economic landscape, our collaboration with Build UK has been particularly important, and we remain grateful to the Construction Products Association (CPA) for its support, especially on issues around sustainability packaging EPR and wider regulatory matters.

Strengthening the CFA for the future – looking ahead

This year we have also taken time to look inward and ensure the CFA continues to evolve with the sector. I am delighted to share that Shaun Wadsworth has been offered a well-deserved promotion, which will fully take effect once we have recruited his successor as CFA and FITA Training Manager.

With the support of the CFA Council, I was pleased to join the board of the UK Sustainable Flooring Alliance (UKSFA), strengthening our contribution to the rapidly advancing sustainability agenda. Floorscape also had its first anniversary and we celebrated some incredible growth and growing engagement!

As I said at the outset, it has been a busy year in many dimensions but also a highly positive one, with CFA continuing to demonstrate its value in membership across the UK.

For more information on CFA membership, the many ways we support our members and our full membership benefits package, email info@cfa.org.uk, call 0115 941 1126, or visit www.cfa.org.uk.

To search for a CFA member in your local area, visit the CFA’s online directory.