Skills for a Green Recovery

In February 21 a report titled: ‘Skills for a Green Recovery – a Call to Action for the UK Construction Sector’ by the Institute of Public Policy, highlighted that significant action needed to be taken from industry and government to deliver the skills required for successful green economic recovery. The findings make for grim reading, but they do highlight some important issues that we, as recruiters to the sector need to be aware of and get behind if we are to help.

The report highlighted a fragmented industry when it comes to skills and employment across disparate organisations and businesses. The Government was also mentioned in its failure to coordinate investment in major infrastructure projects with investment in vocational training and employment, leading to a mismatch between skills shortages and skills gaps and the supply of skilled workers into the construction sector.

Building Back Britain commission said last month, in direct response to the sector’s skills crisis, that major regional training hubs should be founded across the UK to increase the construction workforce.

One other area that jumped out to us is the potential loss of around 750,000 construction workers over the next fifteen years, due to retirement – more than one in three workers in the sector are aged 50 and over (The Farmer Review 2016). Sit this alongside the reduction (by 2.5%) in the proportion of workers under the age of 30 entering the sector and you can see the stark warning, that as an industry we need to take seriously.

At Velocity we are looking at ways of helping, of doing our bit to help reduce the skills gap and increase the attractiveness of the sector. Watch this space!