Britain faces shortage of engineers, warns Dyson

Britain faces a desperate shortage of engineers "unless something drastic is done", Sir James Dyson warned yesterday.

The vacuum cleaner and hand dryer tycoon said companies would begin to move their engineering facilities abroad if graduation trends continued. Only 22,000 engineering students graduate each year, said Sir James, a former industrial designer, but there were "37,000 vacancies this year, and that will soon go up to around 200,000".

Sir James's vacuum cleaner business Dyson will today post record results showing that it is shrugging off tough trading conditions.

Dyson's profits rose to £206m from £190m in 2009 – its most successful ever set of results.