Who is going to build homes in Britain?

The general election season is upon us, and it seems likely that the UK will head to the polls within the next six months or so. Pre-election manifestos are likely to focus heavily on housing, with each party wanting to outdo each other on home-building targets, housing reforms, and net zero targets. However, a significant issue looms. The UK is grappling with a severe shortage of construction workers, a problem that is not being adequately addressed. 

According to an analysis conducted by the Construction Product Association (CPA), around 300,000 construction workers have left the industry since 2019. This comes as the housing crisis and climate change need to be tackled. 

In 2019, the UK construction sector already had an age demographic problem, with a spike in construction workers aged between 50 and 64. As a result, the industry was set to lose one-fourth of its workforce within the next 10/15 years, according to an analysis conducted by Noble Francis of the CPA. The EU workers also contributed significantly to the making up of the construction workforce, especially between the ages of 25 and 39.

 European builders who finish projects have been unable to come back to the UK to work due to stricter visa requirements. That loss has been keenly felt in the 25- —to 39-year-old demographic.

But the biggest losses have been UK-born builders between 45 and 59 who have retired early or retrained to go into another industry. This has resulted in a brain drain in the sector.

Francis says the loss of these workers has had a devastating impact on the industry, with 86% of construction in the UK comprising of small and medium-sized firms. This underscores the urgency of the situation.

The practical impacts of the age-demographic problem in UK construction are primarily that there has been a loss of 300,000 UK construction workers but, just as critically, it is the knowledge and experience that has been lost so it is a twofold loss to the industry.

 The labour shortages come when the demand for housing has been at an all-time high, and the government has been unable to meet its target of building 300,000 homes a year for years. Construction apprenticeships have also not effectively taken up younger workers wanting to work in the industry. The average apprenticeship in the last five years has paid £31,000 and has a dropout rate of 40%. According to the Construction Industry Trading Body, close to a third of all construction workers are employed temporarily rather than permanently. 

The CPA also estimates that the government will miss its 300,000 targets on house building for last year by over 40%. It is clear that successive governments will continue to miss home building targets unless they address the issue of attracting and retaining more workers to the construction sector. According to Francis of the CPA, if we want industry to invest in skills, capacity and offsite construction, the house building sector needs to have more stable demand medium-term and long-term, which is only possible if the government invests in social house building. This is something that none of the political parties are talking about.