UK facing critical shortage of skilled tradespeople – report
The UK faces a critical shortage of skilled tradespeople that threatens to undermine ambitions on housing and net zero, a new report is warning.
Checkatrade said there was an urgent need for 1.3 million new skilled workers and 350,000 apprentices over the next decade to meet Government targets and ever-growing demands on the construction, home improvement and repair industries.
Its report said that with an improving economy, lower interest rates and accelerated planning processes, the home improvement and repair sector is forecast to grow by 40% over the next decade.
But, this promising growth is at risk due to a severe skills deficit, exacerbated by an ageing workforce, with more than a third of current workers aged over 50 and many planning to retire within the next decade, said Checkatrade.
Retirees
To address the replacement of retirees, the sector will need to recruit 377,000 new workers, coupled with the additional 734,000 to meet current demand in the home improvement, repair and construction sectors, it was forecast.
Jambu Palaniappan, chief executive at Checkatrade, said: “The home improvement and repair sector is a crucial one, not just when it comes to delivering meaningful results against our Government’s Building Better plans, but also in order to shore up and future-proof existing housing stock.
“The potential benefits for both individual homeowners and the wider economy are immense. However, this vision of modern, energy-efficient homes that are fit for 21st-century Britain will remain out of reach unless we tackle the critical trade skills gap head-on.”
Andrew Evans at Capital Economics, which helped with the research, added: “Addressing the Government priorities of increased housebuilding and reaching Net Zero will require a skilled construction workforce with the capacity to deliver the associated increase in activity.
“Our modelling shows the scale of the challenge. Among many striking findings, 377,000 new recruits are needed over the next decade for home improvement and repair work alone.”
– In a separate report, skills development organisation, City & Guilds, and the Lifelong Education Institute, called on the government to learn from mistakes of the past and create a long-term skills strategy for lifelong learning and economic growth.
Skills policy
Kirstie Donnelly, chief executive of City & Guilds, said: “We have a once in a generation opportunity to clean the slate of skills policy for good and create a holistic, long-term strategy for uplifting our economy through skills provision that works.
“It’s crucial now that we learn from mistakes of the past. I we don’t get this right now, we will never resolve our productivity and growth problem.
“Not only is this critical to solve in multiple industries in need of skills, it’s also critical to the delivery of this Government’s missions.”
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Turns out that that all those know-nothing degrees, usually ending in the word ‘studies, aren’t that useful to society after all.
Turns out that Brexit was a terrible idea.
Bit of a weird comment. The story is about a shortage in one area, not a surplus in another.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be allowing this very limited skills pool to work on London penthouses that will never be occupied because they only exist for the world’s super rich to hide their cash.
The skills only go to London because that’s where the top paying jobs are. Are you suggesting that there is some sort of central control on the location of labour ? The article makes it clear that there is a huge shortage of skills. This is not likely to change with sufficient speed. Bright youngsters are chasing well paid jobs in technology related areas while the less bright tend to go for those studies that Adrian cites. Society looks down at school leavers who opt for building trades or other craft groups but whine about shortages in the next breath.… Read more »
I’m saying London needs an Article 4. If skills are limited across the UK we shouldn’t be using them to build empty homes.
If they are empty for a given period of time they should come into play for repurposing. Empty homes = places to accommodate homeless people, or people who need an upgrade to their present home due to circumstances such as family size. If some oligarch wants to whine or winge about that just tell him there’s a few modest monthly rent cheques on their way and he can have his house back in say 10 years time. That would soon wipe out the attraction of keeping “empties” as a store of wealth.
I was a welder the last crash in 2008 saw an end to that, all the smaller engineering shops like the one I worked in were going out of business, where will the skilled tradesmen come from now bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, roofers, not to mention welders, fabricators, fitters, turners and so on the manufacturing industry has been decimated, The great white hope the London finance centre can`t produce them this septic isle needs to wake up put some people who have some idea how to run it properly not to be there to make themselves look great on television and… Read more »
I worked with a training provider some time ago. Us, and all of the other providers in the UK begged the UK government not to scrap apprentice schemes as this would be exactly what happened.
Ironically, many qualified trades have now left the UK and taken their skills to the EU as the wages and living conditions are considerably better.
It will take decades to repair the damage done by the Tories and Brexiters.
Brexit! Winning!
Isn’t it labours fault for not fixing it by now? Labour, grrrrr
As someone involved in the industry, Brexit has stripped us of many skilled workers who construct houses and many more with the work ethic that justifies investment in construction.
Many Brexiteers are neither of the above and now gradually realising that their idleness and benefits does not give them a god given right to a roof over their head.
Brexit absolutely obliterated our construction industry far more than the “project fear” side predicted.
Some Materials have gone up by 5 times in cost, and the only way sites can function is with 1 qualified trade and 6 apprentices.