It鈥檚 like one of those school maths problems: 鈥業f building an extra 10,000 homes needs an extra 30,000 workers, how much chance does the government have of meeting its target of 1.5m new homes over this parliament?鈥�
The government says it is 鈥渢urbocharging growth鈥� no less, with new, mandatory targets for councils to ramp up housebuilding across the country and remove blockages in the planning system.
But even if it succeeds, are the skilled people there to build these new homes? Skill shortages have plagued the industry for decades in all but the deepest recessions. Will it really be different this time?
Bricklayers, site managers and quantity surveyors are in greatest demand, according to the Home Builders Federation (HBF) and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) but there is scarcely a trade that doesn鈥檛 urgently need more skilled labour.
Skills England is the latest in a succession of government bodies set up to resolve this problem.
It says the UK construction workforce stood at just over two million in the second quarter of 2024 and despite an average of 38,000 vacancies advertised per month, 31% of construction employers reported that finding skilled staff was their key challenge.
The CITB has estimated that 252,000 extra workers will be needed over 2024-28 to meet industry needs of all kinds, of which housebuilding will absorb 159,000.
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Skills England noted the HBF had found that in 2023 up to 20% of the house-building workforce comprised non-UK nationals with up to 65% of labourers in London being foreigners.
It explains: 鈥淐onstruction typically has highly cyclical and unpredictable profit margins and therefore struggles to invest in skills and innovation.
鈥淗igh rates of sub-contracting and self-employment also disincentivise employer investment in training for on-site workers. The UK construction industry and supply chain is currently highly fragmented and lacks transparency. It has also lagged behind that of other countries and other sectors of the UK economy.鈥�
Skills England is still bedding-in but the HBF has said it should become a one-stop shop for skills policy, instead of the industry having to deal with Whitehall鈥檚 housing, business and education departments for different aspects of skills issues.
So can the industry find enough people? 鈥淣o,鈥� says Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB): 鈥淭here are not enough workers to build 1.5m homes. There was a ministerial round table on this towards the end of last year and I think there was a recognition that you can鈥檛 just turn on the tap.
鈥淭his is a big challenge and we will need non-UK workers but also to attract new UK ones to further education colleges with parity between academic and vocational training.鈥�
Berry says it takes two to three years to train someone in a building trade 鈥渁nd while there鈥檚 been a lot of talk about boot camps and shorter courses, those can help but they don鈥檛 deliver fully-skilled employees.
鈥淎 bricklayer trained that way might be well able to lay a row of bricks for a volume housebuilder but if you鈥檙e an SME housebuilder you need them to do more 鈥� like build an arch 鈥� and that is something more skilled.鈥�
Berry says that 40% of FMB members are struggling to recruit skilled trades 鈥� bricklayers and carpenters in particular.
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Volume builders don鈥檛 have the same skills problem says Steve Turner, an HBF executive director 鈥� at least, not yet:
鈥淭here is not enough skilled labour to build 300,000 homes a year but we鈥檙e not going from 200,000 to 300,000 in one go and the other constraints, such as planning and lack of affordable mortgage lending, need removing before we can increase output. We鈥檒l have to train tens of thousands of new people and that will take time.鈥�
鈥淏asically, you need 30,000 people to build an extra 10,000 homes and since that can鈥檛 happen overnight we have a short window of opportunity to take positive steps to increase industry capacity鈥�, Turner says.
He explains that, while a number of initiatives are in progress 鈥渨e also need help from government in terms of working with education providers to ensure construction courses are producing people to the right standard and how we better use the skills levies housebuilders pay, and reforming the Construction Industry Training Board such that it is fit for purpose鈥�.
The HBF says the skills training and education sector is not delivering the desired results and students completing further education courses 鈥渁re simply not at the level employers need them to be such that they are useful in the workplace and as a result, many find getting a work placement difficult and drift into other non-skilled roles outside of industry鈥�.
This arises from inadequacies in the courses rather than among the students. The HBF says many courses are 鈥渘ot fit for purpose鈥� due to a lack of focus on practical skills and too much time spent on non-construction subjects.
At 16 hours per week, these courses devote minimal time to practical skills and only after completing an apprenticeship following a two-year course are students competent enough to be useful, the HBF says.
According to the federation, the CITB 鈥渉as not been sufficiently nimble or attuned to the requirements of home builders and is not solving the challenges the industry faces鈥�.
Although the CITB works on a levy-and-grant basis, the latter is 鈥渘ot easy聽to claim, and too often grants are provided for training which companies would have to undertake anyway rather than for genuinely value-adding training鈥�, the HBF says.
鈥淭his has created a situation where companies with the capacity to do so are spending huge amounts of time and effort to claw back grant funding into their companies. SMEs without capacity to do that miss out and are generally struggling to access grant funding for training鈥�.
The CITB disagrees and points to 拢140m invested by itself and the National House Building Council (NHBC) in 鈥榟omebuilding skills hubs鈥� designed to deliver up to 5,000 apprenticeship starts and job opportunities each year.
These offer 鈥渇ast-track construction training and apprenticeships focusing on areas of critical demand鈥�, including the CITB estimate that up to an additional 159,000 construction workers are needed to meet the homebuilding target. Hubs are mainly intended for areas where there is a cluster of large sites planned and all need to recruit.
Wendy Osborn, CITB head of strategic operations, says: 鈥淭here鈥檚 lot of work to be dome at local level recruiting adults as well as young people. Adults need alternative routes, maybe not a full apprenticeship but on-site experience, so they learn on the job. With adults the main thing will be to show what job opportunities and prospects are available.鈥�
Osborn also says the CITB must 鈥渕ake sure firms are meeting the diversity challenge and recruiting from as wide a range of people as possible鈥�.
This is not simply a matter of being virtuous but one of necessity. The scale of recruitment required is such that more women and members of ethnic minorities will be needed alongside the traditional recruitment of young men leaving education.
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An HBF paper says: 鈥淭he homebuilding on site workforce is 92% white and 91% male. This lack of diversity is a massive limitation on the industry鈥檚 potential workforce鈥�. It adds: 鈥淭here are not enough role models from different backgrounds to inspire people from more diverse backgrounds into sector鈥�.
In 2022 the HBF launched an initiative called Women Into Home Building to address the industry鈥檚 gender imbalance. It has so far engaged more than 250 women, with some 80 candidates benefiting from site management work placements and training support.
However the HBF has noted that school and college leavers of all kinds 鈥減refer jobs that don鈥檛 involve site work or manual labour鈥�.
Perhaps the answer, then, is to offer more indoor jobs 鈥� in other words, building prefabricated houses in modern factories.
Off-site production using 鈥榤odern methods of construction鈥� (MMC) was the great hope of the previous decade and millions of pounds were poured into building factories to supply the market. But MMC have so far failed to live up to expectations. Insurance giant Legal & General shut its modular factory in 2023 citing losses of 拢174m. The same year Ilke Homes failed with debts of 拢319.4m and last year TopHat Industries went after losing 拢46m.
This is hardly an encouraging background for future investment in MMC factories. But Osborn says: 鈥淎lthough takeup of MMC has been slower than expected we think that will increase once there is such a large house-building programme and we have already seen timber frame take off in England.鈥�
Jake Boomhauer, director of Boomhauer & Associates and former head of MMC policy at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, thinks modular construction still has a future and 鈥渃ould take up some slack in the skills shortages in the house-building market and contribute greatly to meeting its target.
鈥淗ouse-builders are dipping their toes in this again because they see MMC can be faster than traditional construction and require less labour,鈥� he says.
And he adds: 鈥淭he skills we need are evolving, it鈥檚 not just an increase in the traditional labour trades; diversification is also required as well as a review into apprenticeships and routes into training.鈥�
Modular construction in future may look rather different from the volumetric methods previously favoured. There is increasing interest in 2D structural panellised building systems, which can offer more flexibility than the 3D volumetric components produced by Legal & General and others.
Panellised off-site systems could be used to replace some traditional site-based activities in a sort of hybrid MMC approach 鈥� for example, for walls and floors but not entire houses.
But installing 2D products still requires a fair amount of work onsite and 鈥渢herefore the speed savings, and labour transfer from onsite to offsite is not as impactful鈥�, Boomhauer says.
It may also be that MMC manufacturers will now simply use their expertise to make and sell their products to housebuilders rather than try to be builders and developers themselves.
Unlike traditional site-based construction, where each house is essentially a one-off (even if it鈥檚 a standard design) efficient factory production requires a steady and repetitive throughput, as Brian Berry observes: 鈥淢odular has a role but I think a combination of higher interest rates and cost of living made people reluctant to buy homes, and so that hit the demand needed for someone to invest in an MMC factory鈥�.
And, he adds, MMC has the disadvantage of being new and unfamiliar: 鈥渢here was an element of the public wanting traditionally-built homes,鈥� he says.
Nevertheless, Skills England appears to like the idea of pursuing the modular concept. It says: 鈥淭he use of modern methods of construction has the potential to reduce construction鈥檚 reliance on skilled labour pools and drive productivity in the sector.
鈥淭he use of MMC in a 430-home site in Birmingham improved efficiency by 50%, and stakeholders across the sector note that workforce shortages are a key driver behind MMC adoption.
鈥淗owever, due to its currently limited use in the sector, MMC adoption will need to be expanded considerably to bring a notable impact on our current skilled workforce requirements,鈥� it says.
Skill shortages have plagued the industry for decades but if the government is serious about meeting its house-building target an awful lot more skilled labour must be found, no matter what benefits might accrue from the use of MMC.
This article was first published in the March 2025 issue of The 羞羞视频 Magazine. Sign up online.
This will almost certainly have to come from beyond the traditional school-leaver pool with more adult recruits, more women and more members of ethnic minorities included.
One incentive for anybody thinking of a career in house-building might be that with employers experiencing a chronic shortage of skills and facing demanding production targets, they could be in an unusually strong position to negotiate over pay.
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