Tom Copley blamed construction skills shortages for exacerbating an already struggling construction industry, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter

Tom Copley at the Labour Party Conference

A skilled worker “crisis” in the construction industry is undermining London’s ambitious housebuilding targets with a housing association saying last year it relied on one roofing contractor for 80,000 homes.

Speaking at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Tom Copley, London’s deputy mayor for housing, urged ministers to review the incentives for staff in London’s construction and development sectors to teach the next generation, when they would earn a lot more working on a building site than lecturing in a college.

Last month the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) estimated that an extra 61,000 workers will be needed every year for five years for the government to meet its target to build 1.5 million homes by 2029.

City Hall has agreed to provide 88,000 homes annually for the next decade in order to solve the capital’s housing crisis. But last year just 11,600 were built, prompting calls for planning reform in order to meet the target in future.

Sir Sadiq Khan has already publicly blamed delays caused by the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), spiralling construction costs and underinvestment from the previous Conservative government for London’s shortcomings. But Copley suggested that even if developers were given the perfect environment to build, they simply wouldn’t have the capacity due to a lack of trained staff.

Housing association L&Q also told an event at the annual Labour Party Conference that at one point last year, they had just one roofing company contracted to deal with 80,000 homes they oversaw.

Fiona Fletcher Smith, chief executive officer, said: “A year ago at L&Q, we had one roofing company to look after 80,000 homes in London and the south-east.

“I’ll tell you, every time it rained, I did not want to open my inbox. In London and the south-east, we only have 60% of the roofing capacity we need. One thing about a home is it needs a roof that doesn’t leak, frankly. But every area is missing skills. We’ve only got 75% of the surveyors we need and you know, surveying is an essential part of the building process. So we need that to happen.

“And the government are doing something on skills, absolutely, but the time scales don’t quite match our ambition to builds. The thing that’s also lacking in the government’s approach is a failure to recognise that paying a further education (FE) college lecturer £32,000 is not going to cut it to attract the best talent to teach in schools across London.”

“People like that are very, very important and there is a crisis there,” Copley said about the development industry. “It’s across the board in terms of people who work in people who work in the development. I was often told previously that it was just that young people didn’t want to go into construction. But actually, it’s actually more complex than that.

“There are a lot of young people who do want to go in construction, but there aren’t the people to train them because you can be earning a six-figure salary on a building site, but only £30,000 teaching in an FE college.

“So there has to be something done about getting people in you can actually train up the next generation in construction.”

The government said it has plans to invest £600m to create up to 60,000 more engineers, bricklayers, electricians, and joiners by 2029 to tackle skills shortages.

Speaking at the Labour Party Conference, Ealing Council leader Peter Mason added: “There are 1.2 million Londoners outside the workforce today out of a population of eight million.

“We can talk a lot about providing opportunities for people to be trained but if you don’t have the people ready to be in the labour force, then that is the fundamental challenge.

“It’s outrageous that even now, after decades are trying to fix the challenge of aligning skills provision with the skills needs, it’s only now that actually we’re getting a degree of flexibility that means that we can hopefully get the people that we need.”

At a separate event on Monday (29th), Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said: “Housing is the single biggest issue facing London. We will not build 88,000 homes a year for the foreseeable future. It needs a big change in regulation and planning rules.

“Across the country, there’s been a perfect storm – a combination of Brexit, the pandemic, the mini budget [in 2022], BSR [building safety regs] concerns, the two staircases rule when it comes to tall buildings. London hasn’t been excluded from that.”

A government spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “Years of underinvestment in skills has created a dire shortage of construction workers – workers this country desperately needs if we are to meet our pledge to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this parliament.

“Through our plan for change we have taken decisive action to build up essential skills in the construction industry and are providing £625m of funding to create up to 60,000 more engineers, bricklayers, electricians, and joiners by 2029.”

Yesterday (Tuesday 30th) Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to shift the UK’s higher education balance away from university and towards trade qualifications.

He laid out aims to for two-thirds of young people to get higher skills, either through university, further education or taking on a gold standard apprenticeship. This target will include at least 10% of young people pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships by 2040.

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