CITB researchers spoke to a sample of 300 construction employers and found that 126 of them struggling to recruit workers with the right skills. Fifteen of the 300 (5%) said that these difficulties were jeopardising the very existence of their business.
54 of the employers (18%) said that a skills gap had hampered their growth over the last two years.
And with more than 400,000 of the current UK construction workforce due to retire in the next 10 years, the CITB is on a recruitment drive for young blood. It has teamed up with JCB to launch the Construction4Growth Skills Drive across England and Wales.
CITB chairman James Wates explained: “Our report clearly shows that more needs to be done to address construction’s skills ‘time bomb’, to safeguard jobs and ensure that growth is possible. With major projects such as the new nuclear build programme coming online in the next five years, now is the time to start sparking the imagination of young people and harnessing their talent for the future of the industry – any delay now could be putting the industry’s growth on hold.
“It is for this very reason that CITB will be hitting the roads this week, visiting schools and skills academies across England and Wales with its Construction4Growth Skills Drive, to support the industry in recruiting more young people. We need to show that construction is a high-tech, world class industry with outstanding career prospects.”
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