Labour: not just the governing party, but the real challenge to delivering on its ambitious housing targets

More than one-third of job vacancies in the UK are due to skills shortages. In the property and construction industries in particular, skilled staff have been lost due to Brexit, COVID19 and retirement and training of new entrants to the market is not keeping pace with the demand. With 77 per cent of UK full-time students between the ages of 18 to 24 years old declining to consider a career in the construction industry, this gap will only continue to widen. Compounding the problem posed by a lack of skilled workers is the limited labour available in the housing industry. With 30,000 more skilled workers required to build every additional 10,000 homes, these workforce challenges are the inconvenient truth that it will be crucial for the government to address if they are ever to realise their ?ambitious housing and development targets.

Encouraging housing development through setting ambitious targets, particularly for brownfield and greyfield sites, is a welcome policy shift from this government and appears promising on the surface. However, in order to complete the transition to a pro-development administration, the government and the industry must work together to address the significant obstacles posed by the understaffed and under resourced local planning system. A quarter of public sector planners left their roles between 2013 and 2020, and even with the additional 300 planning officers that Angela Rayner has promised, the tide will take a long time to turn. The reality is that developers are facing a planning process which is ever slower moving and, even once that obstacle has been accounted for, when a project gets to construction there are further staffing challenges to overcome.

There aren’t enough skilled workers to build at the scale required to meet government targets, even if the land is made available. While prioritising apprenticeship programmes in the construction sector is a positive move, it won’t have an immediate impact on the government's short-term housing goals. The skills shortage in the industry is a well-documented issue, and while apprenticeship schemes are essential for the long-term health of the sector, training new workers takes time and the skilled teachers and trainers to teach them.

The chronic underfunding of apprenticeship programmes has meant levels have stagnated since 2017, leaving these schemes eight years behind inflation and struggling to deliver at the scale required. It’s not just construction where this is an issue, apprenticeship programmes across various industries are facing similar challenges, with some close to shutting down due to the financial strain. Despite these difficulties, the importance of bringing new talent into the construction industry cannot be overstated, and apprenticeships will play a vital role in solving the skills gap over time.

The real challenge lies in making construction an attractive career path for young people. Without a comprehensive strategy to shift perceptions of the industry, apprenticeship programmes will continue to struggle to recruit and retain talent. While learning practical skills like bricklaying can be done relatively quickly, developing the broader range of expertise needed for large-scale construction projects takes much longer. Therefore, these programmes will help in the long term, but they won’t solve the immediate housing supply issues that the industry is facing. The government needs to take a longer-term view and ensure that these initiatives are properly funded and supported. In the meantime, the housing industry will continue to face significant challenges in meeting its targets due to the shortage of skilled workers.