"It’s no secret that skills shortages have plagued the construction sector for years. Since 2019, the sector has haemorrhaged 300,000 workers and employers are feeling the skills pinch"
- Haman Manak - Stanmore
Labour have not been shy in making housebuilding a major talking point of their first term. They have vowed to tear up restrictive planning laws and rethink environmental rules in order to ‘get Britain building again’.
Bold action is needed, I agree, but if they don’t approach the worker shortage with the same courage then their housebuilding drive is unlikely to get off the ground.
It’s no secret that skills shortages have plagued the construction sector for years. Since 2019, the sector has haemorrhaged 300,000 workers and employers are feeling the skills pinch.
The shortage is sector-wide, but housebuilding is one of the areas it’s affecting most dramatically. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) names private housing as one of the three major problem areas for worker shortages (CITB). Whether it’s bricklayers, roofers, site managers, or heavy machine operators – chances are we’re short of them. This will pose a problem for the Government as they encourage developers to get building.
And it’s not just housebuilding that’s feeling the shortage, despite the long hours and hard work that they put in, the entire construction workforce is stretched. Even with Rachel Reeves’ announcement that major infrastructure projects such as the Stonehenge tunnel and the Restoring Your Railways project will be scrapped, there are still too many building projects in Britain and not enough workers.
In October, work will begin on the Sizewell C Nuclear Power Station; a massive undertaking which will require thousands of workers over a nine-to-twelve-year timeframe. Projects like these are only going to spread the workforce even more thinly.
There simply aren’t enough people to complete the job at hand. Why, then, is the Government not doing enough to fix it?
Labour thinks that their new Skills England Bill will be the silver bullet but, while it is always good to encourage young people into the sector, apprenticeships are not going to be enough.
Starmer’s new initiative promises to free up apprenticeship levy funding and grant companies more freedom in how they use it. In the Prime Minister’s mind, freeing up this funding is the best way to build a future-ready workforce and wean the country off of its supposed dependence on migrant workers.
While the basic concept of this policy is an attractive one, it doesn’t address the problem in the short term. If there are to be 1.5 million more homes in Britain in five years' time, then we cannot afford to wait the three to five years that it takes for apprenticeship courses to be completed.
Even if we did wait for apprenticeships to come good, the reality is that a worryingly low number of young people today view a career in construction as an attractive prospect. A job in construction is the perfect place for a young person to learn practical skills, become a solution-driven individual and climb the ladder to a well-paid, stable career, but unfortunately not many see it this way. In CITB’s 2023 Migration and Construction report, employers pointed to this lack of interest in construction as an explanation for the recruitment issues that they’re facing.
CITB has reported that 251,500 more workers will be needed to meet UK construction output by 2028. It’s hard to believe that we can recruit that many apprentices to fill the gap.
If the Government are going to achieve their housebuilding target, then we’re still going to need migrants on and off the sites. Migrants already play a vital role in construction projects across Britain, and without them, construction activity could slump. Bold changes to planning laws won’t be enough if we don’t have the people to actually build the homes.
As Labour look to implement new immigration policies, they must bear this in mind. If we lose all of that overseas talent, then building new homes will be impossible.
I am all for the reforms that the Government is making – we need them to galvanise the construction sector into action, but I can’t help but feel that they are overlooking this monumental issue.
The worker shortage is not a problem that can be swept under the carpet, it needs tackling head-on if Labour are really going to get Britain building again.
