The Chancellor has announced, in his Autumn statement, that the housing budget is being doubled to £2bn a year in an attempt to deliver 400,000 homes by the end of the decade.
We conducted a survey midway through 2015 and found that 300,000 new homes need to be built per year increasing the workforce to 1.98 m workers.
Randstad CPE’s analysis comprised a survey of 1,170 construction workers in related jobs – of which 82% agree that there is already a shortage of skilled workers in the UK.
One in ten house building workers (10%) are currently more than sixty years old – while 4% of the total are actively considering retirement.
There are many misconceptions in the industry like its male dominated and no training. We need to find the workers, convince them to join the industry & train them. Education is the key. We need to get into schools early, educate them and build apprenticeships
In the construction industry women make up 1/5 of workers.
If expecting an ambitious output, Britain needs to be ambitious about employment. Despite various speeches being made on this topic, the targets remain seemingly out of reach. We need to think beyond the ‘what’, the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ and instead look into who will be building enough homes.