We recently hit the motorway to Leeds for UKREIIF, I’ve been reflecting on the Government’s policy of July 2024 to build 1.5 million new homes this Parliament, the most ambitious housing target the country has set in a generation. Whilst that ambition is welcome, the conversation in Westminster, in town halls and at industry conferences such as UKREIIF has so far been dominated by planning reform, funding pots, land release and how can we get close to this promise. None of these discussions address the structural failure in the system, which is the workforce that engineers need to design, specify and build at scale. We are looking for a 50% increase in delivery which would imply a 50% increase in workforce at a time when the workforce is shrinking and is at 2.05 million, which is its lowest level for 24 years.
The figures are difficult to read and the BCIS have said “construction workforce shrinks by more than 300,000 workers in 20 years”. According to other sources we are due to lose 750,000 construction workers in the next 10 years and to maintain the current status we will need to recruit 75,000 workers per year and not continue to lose the 15,000 workers. The reality is that we need to be recruiting 100,000+ per year to improve the situation.
Civil and structural engineering, the disciplines that turn planning consents into actual homes, sit right at the centre of the shortfall. At the same time, the financial barriers to entering the profession have grown sharply. A four year university degree in engineering can now cost as much as £89,000, narrowing the pipeline of new entrants at precisely the moment the country needs it widened.
It is worth being honest about what this means in practice. Even where land is unlocked and consent is granted, schemes still need engineers to take them forward. They need designers, modellers, geotechnical specialists, structural engineers and site supervisors. If those people do not exist in sufficient numbers, projects slip. Costs rise. Investor confidence drains away. The 1.5 million figure looks very much like an old slogan rather than a programme of work.
After four decades in this industry, I have seen housing cycles come and go. What is different about this one is not the demand side, which has been building for decades, but the supply side of skills. The previous generation of engineers, the one I joined in the 1980s, is now leaving the profession faster than we are replacing it. We cannot recruit our way out of this with imports alone. We have to build the next generation here, in our colleges, our universities and on our construction sites.
Today, responsibility for training apprentices appears to be firmly placed at the construction industry’s door and with 60% of the companies being SME’s we are expecting SME’s to train the next generation. The reality is apprentices do not become productive for the first 12 months and many leave following this period and an apprentice paid for 5 days and works for 4 days and minimum wage is two thirds of the average person’s wage. Effectively an apprentice earns 80% of an average wage when you consider the day in college.
That is why Sutcliffe has made a public commitment to train forty new engineers over the next decade. It is also why we work in partnership with City of Liverpool College and Liverpool John Moores University on apprenticeship and graduate routes, and why our colleagues hold national roles with bodies including the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Association for Consultancy and Engineers. Forty apprentices from a single firm is a contribution, not a solution. The solution requires every credible practice in the country, alongside government and the regulators, to commit to the same kind of pipeline thinking.
There are practical steps that would help. Continuing to expand degree apprenticeships so that talented young people are not asked to choose between £89,000 of debt and a career in engineering. Backing the technical colleges that already do excellent work in our regions. Reforming procurement so that social value commitments around training and apprenticeships are weighted properly, not treated as a procurement boilerplate. None of this is glamorous, and none of it makes a good photograph at the front of a building site. However, all of it is necessary.
The honest answer to the question of whether we can deliver 1.5 million homes is highly doubtful in this government term and this will remain a pipedream until we build the workforce alongside the houses. That is the conversation the industry needs to have at UKREIIF and well beyond it.