INDUSTRY UPDATE VIEWPOINT
Viewpoint
opportunity for SMEs to grow,” Gray said.
“Construction is a positive, lucrative and entrepreneurial career path. Apprentices enter into work debt-free compared to students. Many construction roles, such as a skilled bricklayer, will pay more than a lot of graduate jobs. If we make training more accessible and provide opportunities for young people, this will help to reach what is an ambitious target.” Energy efficient homes While skills are desperately needed to make the industry prosper, FMB research shows 91 per cent of surveyed members with more than 25 employees are confident they can deliver important energy efficiency retrofit work. The trouble is, 40 per cent of members are rarely or never asked by consumers to improve the energy efficiency of their homes. Just five per cent were asked by homeowners to incorporate low-carbon technologies during renovation work. The absence of post- election commitment to the retrofit agenda is exacerbating a weak market. Ambitious plans to build 1.5 million new homes in the next five years have overshadowed the lack of clarity and commitment to upgrading old, draughty housing stock. Berry said: “Labour has an opportunity to deliver a national retrofit plan to upgrade homes, which would reduce carbon emissions, cut consumers’ energy bills and help improve public health. All we need is the political will.”
The FMB gives its viewpoint on the headlines affecting the construction sector
Cautiously optimistic
A career of choice As noted above, skilling the next generation of construction workers is going to be essential to the industry’s long-term success. Key to this is breaking the stigma around vocational training and presenting construction as an enticing career of choice. Jeremy Gray, Head of Policy at the FMB, said: “As a profession, construction is more than people think. With a wide range of jobs from bricklayers, site managers, planners and surveyors – it can be quite a lucrative and rewarding career. “If more young people joined the industry, it would not only address our skills shortage and provide succession planning with an ageing workforce, but also offer great local employment opportunities for school leavers.” Gray pointed out that the new body, Skills England, will need to work alongside existing bodies such as the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) to help builders hire new starters. “With the government’s ambitious target to build 370,000 homes a year, a figure not reached for 50 years, we should see this as a fantastic
Positively, builders’ output is recovering, albeit slowly. FMB members are reporting signs of stability in the industry, noting an uptick in workloads of seven per cent and enquiries by three per cent over the second quarter of this year. The data, which comes from the FMB’s State of Trade Survey Q2 2024 , offers hope for the future. However as FMB Chief Executive Brian Berry notes, there is “substantial room for improvement”, particularly when it comes to developing skills and boosting profits, with 55 per cent of businesses reporting lower than expected profits this quarter. Berry said: “The new government has announced promising plans to boost housebuilding rates and reform the planning system, which may result in a much needed economic stimulus. “However, the UK is experiencing a construction skills crisis, and concerns remain about viability without a workforce to deliver new homes. The Prime Minister’s speech laying the groundwork for Skills England was hopeful but lacked detail. We need to see a long-term skills plan to deliver the government’s ambitions for growth.
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Master Builder
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