Skills shortage hits builders

Building employers yesterday called on the Government to provide more funding for youth training amid fears that worsening skills shortages could throw the industry's recovery off track.

According to the Construction Confederation's latest quarterly trends survey, nearly two thirds of firms now report difficulty in hiring bricklayers while four in 10 report shortages of plasterers, carpenters and joiners .

Sir Martin Laing, president-designate of the confederation, said that overall there had been a big improvement in business optimism with output and trading prospects both up strongly.

However, he added: "The one cloud on the horizon is the growing evidence of skills shortages. This makes it crucially important that the industry rapidly builds up training programmes which will deliver the skilled workers we shall need into the foreseeable future."

Sir Martin said he was making urgent representations to the Department of Education and Employment to secure a new Youth in Construction Training Scheme providing places for an additional 10,000 young people.

The survey shows a marked rise in activity with output forecast to rise by 3 per cent a year for the remainder of this decade. The number of companies reporting success in tendering is also up while tender prices and margins are increasing.

The balance of firms reporting an increase in output compared with the previous quarter was 37 per cent against a figure of 16 per cent in the last survey. The only region to report a decline was London.

Meanwhile, a balance of 53 per cent of firms expect output to rise in the coming 12 months while 43 per cent expect to take on more employees. The proportion of contractors working at or near to full capacity is more or less unchanged on the previous quarter at 34 per cent.