Fiona Fletcher Smith, the chief executive of housing association L&Q, recently highlighted a critical issue affecting the construction of new homes in London. The city hopes to produce 440,000 of the federal government’s goal of 1.5 million new homes by 2030. As it pursues these ambitious goals, it is confronted with a crippling skills shortage that threatens to derail its progress.
Over the course of last year, L&Q effectively maintained and/or refurbished 80,000 homes. They ran into some problems with only having one roofing company under contract for ongoing maintenance. The lack of a pipeline of skilled workers is the most critical concern. Last year, only 11,600 of these homes were actually built in London, and the city is still falling hugely short of this target. City Hall’s ambitious commitment to construct 88,000 homes annually over the next decade is admirable. This commitment is a promising step to address our decades-long, deeply entrenched housing crisis.
In a recent address at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development Tom Copley struck an urgent note. He lamented that there aren’t enough trained professionals on hand to satisfy developer needs. People like that are hugely valuable, Copley said. He underscored the essential, and often overlooked, part that skilled workers play in the building industry, and the crisis that continues to plague this skilled workforce.
As Fletcher Smith additionally explained, surveyors are in short supply. Only 75% of those needed are presently available. To this end, surveying is one of the healthiest construction markets today. A lack of qualified surveyors causes significant hold ups and stress for housing associations like L&Q.
Even the Home Builders Federation, the industry lobby group for private sector developers, has sounded the alarm on the skills gap crippling the industry. Understandably, the federal government is moving quickly to address these challenges. They will pump £600 million into training that will provide up to 60,000 new engineers, bricklayers, electricians and joiners by 2029. This investment is to help meet the skilled labor shortages that are hurting the construction industry.
Copley especially chastised the government for scaring away talent into critical teaching roles needed to train the next generation of skilled workers. And he called the government’s response inadequate at best. They don’t seem to realise that if you pay a Further Education college lecturer £32,000 you aren’t going to get the highest quality talent and skill to come and teach in Schools in inner London.
