The construction industry sits at the forefront of Britain’s economy and will be crucial to the government’s levelling up agenda. If we are to meet government ambitions for improving the country’s infrastructure, housing, and net-zero, it is essential the industry attracts the right workforce and arms them with the skills they need. Our latest forecasts show that the industry will need to recruit an additional 266,000 new workers by 2026, if the industry is to meet projected construction output. This means that if projected growth is met, by 2026 construction employment will reach a high of nearly 2.78 million.
The UK economy is currently seeing the tightest labour market for several decades with construction vacancies nearly double at the beginning of 2022 compared to 2019. Recruiting workers will be a major task in the coming months and new thinking is needed about how employers recruit.
One of the key levelling up missions is focused on skills and training. The mission seeks to ensure that by 2030, the number of people successfully completing high quality skills training will have significantly increased in every area of the UK. To achieve this, the government is placing local employers at the heart of skills provision.
Local Skills Improvement Plans [LSIPs] will be the vehicle for this key reform. The Levelling Up White Paper, published in February 2022 confirmed that LSIPs will be rolled out nationally. Employers will be given a stronger voice in shaping local skills provision, working closely with FE providers, and engaging effectively with local leaders and other stakeholders. The government’s commitment to this employer-led approach is reflected by LSIPs being placed on a statutory footing through the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
CITB is working to ensure LSIPs effectively align local training provision to employment opportunities in our industry, to give more young people a job or apprenticeship in construction. We have been working with the trailblazers to ensure that local training and skills provision better meets the needs of employers.
We will be publishing CITB LSIP guidance this summer to help embed construction as a priority sector within local plans as LSIPs are rolled out across England. This guidance will offer employer representative bodies selected to lead LSIPs in their local area a suite of policy recommendations to tackle local construction skills issues and challenges, alongside industry analysis and research. It will also encourage collaboration within the industry between employers, local government, and colleges and training providers.
A key component of the levelling up agenda is to support people to realise their career aspirations without having to leave their communities and ensure that local employers have access to the skills they need to grow and thrive. The Skills and Post-16 Education Act offers a foundation for this ambition to be achieved.
Key Points:
• Local Skills Improvement Plans offer a golden opportunity to ensure that technical skills provision better meets employer skills needs.
• Employers, FE providers and local leaders can collaborate closely through the LSIP process to align local training provision more effectively with employment opportunities.
• CITB is seeking to encourage collaboration within the industry between employers, local government, and colleges and training providers.
This article originally appeared in The Leaders Council’s special report on ‘The Impact of the Skills & Post-16 Education Act on the Construction, Engineering & Manufacturing sectors’, published on July 4, 2022. Read the full special report here.
Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
