To build the future of housing, we need to work together 

Declaring new measures to tackle Britain’s housing crisis has become somewhat of a Conservative Party Conference tradition.

In recent memory we’ve had David Cameron, in 2015, calling for “a national crusade to get homes built”, Sajid Javid, in 2016, declaring: “It’s time to get building,” and now Theresa May, urging housebuilders to “do your duty to Britain and build the homes our country needs”.

This year, the Prime Minister elected to put her money where her mouth is, announcing a further £10 billion for the Help to Buy scheme, providing assistance for a further 135,000 people to get on the housing ladder. She also pledged an additional £2 billion for new social housing.

While an influx of cash to stimulate demand in the housing industry is obviously welcome, it risks obscuring the pressing issue facing the sector, the severe shortage of skilled workers needed to deliver these ambitions.

Businesses need to be more vocal in making the case to government that construction can be a key player in driving the STEM agenda

A report launched by Arcadis earlier this year lays bare the extent of the recruitment crisis facing the construction industry. It revealed that Britain must recruit 400,000 people each year to deliver the housing and infrastructure we need, equivalent to one person every 77 seconds.

That means 18,000 more bricklayers and masons, 60,000 more carpenters and joiners, and another 40,000 electricians. All of this is set against the backdrop of ongoing uncertainty over Britain’s relationship with Europe, and the likelihood that the industry – heavily reliant on foreign labour - will face higher barriers to bringing in workers from overseas.

The Arcadis report notes that “the nation’s skills gap is something that the industry loves to discuss, yet shies away from implementing practical solutions”. It concludes: “As a nation, this is now the biggest issue we face.”

I believe that everyone linked to the sector bears a responsibility to tackle this skills shortage, beginning with effectively countering the portrayal of construction as a “4D industry” - dirty, dangerous, demeaning and depressing.

We need better and more nuanced careers guidance that gives students a much more rounded view of the fantastic careers on offer in the sector. This shouldn’t just be left to schools careers guidance teams, employers must get involved by approaching local schools and going in to spread the word themselves.

If Mrs May really wants to live up to her conference promise of “getting government back into the business of building houses,” it will need a concerted effort by everyone involved in the sector to make government policy into reality.

Businesses need to be more vocal in making the case to government that construction can be a key player in driving the STEM agenda, highlighting the employment opportunities that exist in a rapidly developing sector.

Look at the advances in off-site manufacturing and modular construction, or the advent of smart technology and building information modelling. We should be telling young people that the construction industry offers them an opportunity to work at the cutting edge of a 21^st century technological revolution.

The government’s new T-Levels have the potential to provide a pathway to addressing our skills crisis, and in our forthcoming report, ‘T-Levels – Shaping skills for the future of the construction industry’, we reiterated the need for the design of the T-level programme to be led by the construction sector.

We set out a number of recommendations, including that the new qualifications must be designed to be flexible enough to respond to rapidly evolving technologies, and the need for structured, meaningful work placements.

If Mrs May really wants to live up to her conference promise of “getting government back into the business of building houses,” it will need a concerted effort by everyone involved in the sector to make government policy into reality.

If as a nation, we continue to fall short in our efforts to equip the next generation with information about the great careers on offer in construction and the skills so badly needed by the industry, the next Prime Minister – whoever he or she may be – will be condemned to repeating the same platitudes on a conference platform for years to come.