Hundreds of thousands of householders in the UK have been waiting over a year to find builders to work on their homes due to a severe shortage of skilled construction workers. Since 2021, 415,000 people have experienced more than 12 months of waiting for construction work to commence. Additionally, 301,000 people have waited a year for plumbers and heating engineers, 294,000 for roofers, and 274,000 for carpenters. Fix Radio’s national construction audit revealed that the average wait time for a bricklayer over the past three years has been more than three months. Customers have also had to wait two and a half months for landscapers, painters, and decorators.
Industry leaders have highlighted that the UK’s shortage of tradespeople has delayed major projects, such as the Co-op Live venue in Manchester. To meet the growing demand, the construction sector needs to acquire an additional 225,000 skilled workers by 2027. The shortage is projected to cost the UK £98 billion in economic growth by 2030. Contributing to the skills deficit is the ageing workforce, with a fifth of construction workers now over 50 years old and a third planning to leave the sector by 2030. The Construction Industry Training Board’s Construction Skills Network estimates that nearly one million tradespeople will retire in the next decade.
While migrant labourers have alleviated some of the shortages in recent years, there is an urgent need to train more British workers. To address this issue, bricklayers, plasterers, roofers, and carpenters were added to the Home Office’s ‘shortage occupation list’ last year. The Labour Party has proposed plans for a new generation of ‘new towns’, and Rishi Sunak has promised to build hundreds of thousands of homes in Britain’s largest cities.
Clive Holland of Fix Radio stressed the need for more builders, warning that without addressing the skills deficit, political efforts to solve the housing crisis would be futile. Two-thirds of Britons surveyed by Fix Radio reported not receiving enough encouragement to pursue a trade career while in school. Moreover, 18 percent of British parents expressed that they would not want their children to work in construction due to concerns about inadequate earnings.
The ongoing skills shortage in the UK construction industry has led to significant delays in home renovations and major projects. The ageing workforce and insufficient encouragement for young people to enter the trade sector have exacerbated the problem. Addressing this skills deficit is crucial to meeting housing demands and preventing economic losses in the future.
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