UK housing delivery in an era of skilled labour shortage

Recently, we’ve been talking a lot about the government’s pledge to build 1.5m homes and some of the challenges we need to overcome to achieve it.

Make no mistake, the target is a massive task that, if achieved, will bring huge benefits to the UK housing market. But to make a success of it, we have to be honest about the scale of the challenges so we can make a plan to overcome them.

Previously, we’ve spoken about the concept of what a home is and how the UK ideal of a 3-bed semi in the suburbs can hold us back from building more. This time, we’re going to look at the skilled labour needed for traditional house building, examining the lack of it and how that affects the 1.5m home pledge.

The demographic timebomb

Let’s call a spade a spade. When it comes to industry skills, the numbers don’t look great.

• The CITB estimates we need to recruit 45,000-50,000 new workers each year just to maintain current output

• The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) identifies skills shortages as a major constraint on housing delivery

• The Times has reported that the skills shortage could hit large infrastructure projects.

What’s more the average age of our construction workforce is getting older and older. It’s been steadily climbing for years simply because we’re not seeing fresh blood come into the industry.

• In 2010 the average age was around 45

• By 2020 the average age pushed past 50

• On current projections, over 20% of the current workforce will retire in the next decade.

This is a ticking time bomb for UK house-building capacity.

Traditional skills are disappearing

Traditional construction relies on a complex ecosystem of highly specialised skills that are becoming increasingly scarce. Consider bricklaying – once a cornerstone of British house building. The number of qualified bricklayers has been in dramatic decline for many years.

• In 1979, there were approximately 95,000 bricklayers in the UK

• By 2019, fewer than 40,000 skilled bricklayers remained

• There are now less than 35,000 active bricklayers nationwide

And it’s not just bricklayers that we have a low number of. The Construction Skills Network predicts a need for around 800 additional plasterers and dry liners annually to keep up with demand. Just like bricklayers, a significant portion of plasterers are close to retirement age with limited entrants to replace them.

This has a massive negative effect on our ability to deliver homes in the traditional construction method.

Why are traditional skills vanishing?

There isn’t one reason for the skills crisis but many.

• Reduced apprenticeship programs

• The perception of construction as a low-tech, low-status career

• Increasing educational emphasis on university degrees

• Competitive job markets offering more attractive career paths

Is the skills gap a symptom of a natural move away from these job paths as other more attractive options present themselves to young people? Perhaps, but as an industry, we can’t just wash our hands of it and say, “It’s not our fault”.

We need to provide a positive case for construction as a career path for young people, both in those traditional roles and the roles offered through different construction methodologies like MMC.

Another reason that’s rarely mentioned is issues around pipeline. Apprentices are employed directly, meaning employers need to have a secure pipeline of work to justify hiring an apprentice.

If employers have an unstable pipeline, it stands to reason that subcontracting labour is a better alternative than directly employing workers. A major downside of this is that apprenticeships often don’t make sense from a financial perspective for these companies.

This isn’t an easy problem to solve.

Is modern methods of construction (MMC) the answer?

There will always be a place for traditional construction methods. Some of our country’s most beloved buildings have been constructed using these methods and the majority of our historic building stock owes its longstanding quality to bricklayers, joiners, carpenters and all the other trades that we’re seeing historic lows of.

However, what now seems obvious is that traditional methods of construction can’t form the backbone of our housing supply anymore. We simply don’t have the requisite skills in the workforce.

Modern methods of construction (MMC) is a methodology that has inherent advantages over traditional methods when it comes to the use of in-demand trades and labour.

With a pivot towards MMC focussed projects, process driven skills become much more valuable than traditional skills like bricklaying. For example, bricklaying is a single purpose skill where you have all your eggs in one basket so to speak. You’re on site to do a single job that requires a high amount of skill. You’re not turning you hand to much else.

A process drive skill is one that’s more varied, being about the process of the construction method rather than one specific skill. You might not have the deep amount of specialisation in a skill that you would with more traditional trades. Instead, you’d have a wider range of skills that perhaps aren’t as a deeply specialised. However, this wider array of skills would have more bearing across the process as a whole.

These multi-skilled professionals are much more beneficial to MMC providers than single trades. Moving towards the benefits it offers is just one way we increase our capacity to build more homes.

 MMC does not mean volumetric

One of the big problems with MMC is its image and the world’s understanding of it.

Many will immediately think of volumetric MMC, which comes with its own problems and preconceptions. But volumetric is just one aspect of MMC. A soap opera is a drama but not all dramas are soap operas. Just like dramas, MMC is a broad church. Coronation Street and Game of Thronesare not the same and it's unfair to compare the two. Likewise, Volumetric and offsite pre-panelised light gauge steel frames can’t be compared. They’re very different beasts. The only thing that unites the two is they’re both forms of offsite MMC.

The pre-fabrication of light gauge steel panels in off-site factory conditions removes the need for many of the in-demand skills we found ourselves lacking while also avoiding many of the limitations of volumetric MMC.

Technical advantages of light gauge steel framing

Light gauge steel frames offer multiple strategic advantages that directly address the skills shortage.

1. Reduced dependency on traditional construction skills – Instead of traditional skills, the method relies on precision engineering and advanced manufacturing techniques, enabling a more standardised, repeatable construction process.

2. Manufacturing Precision – Because panels are produced in controlled factory environments, quality of product is much easier to achieve. Through computer-aided design that ensures millimetre-level accuracy, consistent quality is possible across the board in a way that would be impossible with traditional on-site methods.

3. Speed of Construction – Offsite panelised MMC offers up to a 50% reduction in on-site construction time. Not only does this minimise weather-related delays and faster project delivery cycles, but it also means that when in-demand trades are needed on-site, they’re needed for less time.

4. Certainty – With MMC, we go in at the earliest stages of a project to ensure a smooth build schedule. This conscientious process and the better quality available through MMC mean you get a level of certainty not attainable in other methods. 

For an example of offsite MMC at work, check out our recent case study of King Street West, an MMC-focused midrise residential development in the heart of Stockport.

How a shift to an offsite approach might look

Ultimately, whatever we do, the change in our approach has to be done with a view to building more homes. That’s what this is all about, after all. To achieve the genuine change needed though, it requires collective will from every member of the industry.

And to be clear, it's not about doing away with traditional methods altogether. A hybrid approach where multiple modalities combine to give us the kind of housing supply we aspire to is the aim.

We spoke in our last article about gentle density, where small midrise developments with green space, great amenities and community-focused design will be instrumental in delivering the millions of homes we need. We also spoke about how offsite MMC and the light gauge steel frame approach were perfect for delivering these developments.

By adopting an approach that looks to build this way, we’ll create new, high-tech jobs that can attract younger, technology-oriented workers into construction. This diversification in the construction work pool will help us develop a more resilient and adaptable workforce while also empowering us to address housing shortages more efficiently.

Looking to the future with positivity and a can-do attitude

The 1.5m homes target is ambitious.

While there are challenges ahead in our efforts to reach it, we have to take a positive attitude. Yes, there are still question marks over the government's approach and the industry is still in need of an answer as to ‘how’ those targets are going be reached. But as a business, Mansell is ready to step up to the plate to help deliver on those targets in our home of Greater Manchester.

With the right skills and the right people on the books across the industry, anything is possible.