‘It’s like Dunkirk for the construction industry!’ The small team rescuing London’s precious building materials

Making the rules work for them … milling British sequoias with National Saw Mills at Tipping Point East. Photograph: Stephen Norman Young

Joel de Mowbray reached breaking point with UK construction in south London in 2020. He was working on a lovely building project, part of Lambeth council’s scheme to make streets more pedestrian-friendly. De Mowbray was installing a public wooden seating area in an underused stretch of street.

“The council were doing treeworks the entire time we were building, felling trees right next to us,” he says. “But we had to go to Ashdown Forest for our supplies. That felt bonkers to me: they were creating the exact material we needed next to our site.”