A NEW, cross industry report calls for a modular approach to training and qualifying the UK construction industry.

The Boosting Routes Into Industry: An Employer’s Perspective report, produced after the National Open College Network (NOCN) consulted with employers, found that all existing training routes into the industry should be retained and streamlined. However, the report also calls for four key changes.

Routes into Industry

All the existing routes into industry need to be retained. These include apprenticeships, vocational qualifications (NVQs) and good quality bootcamps. The report recommends that industry, working with governments and others, move towards a more agile set of properly funded high-quality modularised UK wide vocational qualifications and accredited training, to match industry’s strategy.

UK Skills System

A common, consistent UK skills system for construction based on a common core for each occupation with built-in flexibility for nations. To include different approaches in the sectors. This must be able to match the needs of addressing the four key challenges (below).

Card Scheme

Develop the CSCS scheme to support verification of competency under the Building Safety Act and ensure it is integrated into a UK wide skills system.

Boosting Recruitment and EDI

As set out in the CLC Industry Skills Plan, industry needs to take a leading role on diversity and enhancing the various approaches being used. It should co-ordinate a single coherent, focused and powerful message of the benefits of working in construction; under-pinned by an agreed approach to EDI.

Making consistent progress, through collaboration, across the UK in these four areas is the best way of ensuring the industry has the workforce its needs to support the move to a more sustainable economy and future, the Boosting Routes Into Industry report concludes.

Nick Roberts, Construction Leadership Council Industry Sponsor for People and Skills and CEO of Travis Perkins plc said about the report: “It provides great insight from employers in the sector into how we can overcome the skills challenges we face by working more collaboratively with each other and with government, and ensuring that we attract, develop and retain competent and productive people who have the skills needed to deliver on net zero, retrofit our buildings, look after our rich built heritage, and create a built environment that we can all be proud of.”

Four Major Challenges

Construction and built environment industry output is £216bn each year, providing around 8.8% of the UK’s jobs.

CLC has identified four major challenges to be addressed by 2030:

Reduce skills shortages of circa 250,000 skilled personnel up to 2027
Upskill the workforce to improve productivity through the use of digitisation, different materials, new products and new methods of working.
Skill the workforce to support net-zero and sustainable housing and infrastructure
Ensure compliance with the legal requirements of the Building Safety Regulator by improving workforce competency.

Employers Survey

The Boosting Routes Into Industry report followed a NOCN survey of employers, analysis of official ONS data and figures from the CSCS card scheme.

The survey found that:

Employers use a range of existing vocational training routes and they see it as essential that all these routes are retained and properly funded.
Ensuring competency of the workforce to comply with the Building Safety Act is a challenge. For example, there are 442,000 people with only a labourer card (level 1 or no qualification).
Over the last 10 years UK skills policy and systems have become more fragmented, including even the definitions of what occupations there are.
A decline in skills funding over the last 10 years, alongside increased complexity in funding streams, holds back recruitment and upskilling.
The industry has used the CSCS card scheme as the mechanism for verifying competency, but it needs to be better integrated into the overall skills system.
Industry continues to struggle to attract sufficient people into the workforce.

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