While Sir Keir has said ministers are “urgently using all levers available to build the homes we need so more families can get on the housing ladder”, the CCS said the government’s major infrastructure projects are at risk because of a “black hole in recruitment”.
Labour’s plan to tackle the housing crisis is unachievable, the construction industry has warned, saying it simply does not have enough workers to build 1.5m homes in the next five years.
Exclusive: The construction industry has poured cold water on the government’s plans to fix the housing crisis, saying a failure to tackle a growing recruitment crisis is ‘not only short-sighted but also dangerous’.
Asked whether there are enough construction workers, Baroness Smith told Times Radio: "No, that's part of the problem, that's what we inherited from the last government, a skills system that was fragmented where a third of vacancies across the economy are because of skills shortages.
As of September 2024, there were almost 100,000 fewer construction workers in the UK than there were five years previous, ONS data shows, due to a stream of workers leaving during the pandemic and a brain drain arising from the retirement of older workers.
