Skills shortage 'undermining new homes target'

City Hall has agreed to provide 88,000 homes annually for the next decade

Construction workers being able to earn more on a building site than training the next generation of builders is causing a skills crisis, London's deputy mayor has said.

Speaking at the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Monday, Tom Copley said there weren't the people to train them "because you can be earning a six-figure salary on a building site, but only £30,000 teaching in a FE college".

The deputy mayor for housing added: "There has to be something done about getting people in (who) can actually train up the next generation."

Mr Copley suggested that even if developers were given the perfect environment to build, they simply wouldn't have the capacity due to a lack of trained staff.

'Not going to cut it'

The government has said it has plans to invest £600m to create up to 60,000 more engineers, bricklayers, electricians, and joiners by 2029 to tackle skills shortages.

City Hall has agreed to build 88,000 homes annually for the next decade in order to solve the capital's housing crisis.

But last year just 11,600 were built, prompting calls for planning reform in order to meet the target in future.

Fiona Fletcher Smith, chief executive of housing association L&Q told an event at the Labour party conference that at one point last year, they had just one roofing company contracted to deal with 80,000 homes they oversaw.

She added: "We've only got 75% of the surveyors we need and you know, surveying is an essential part of the building process. So we need that to happen.

"And the government are doing something on skills, absolutely, but the timescales don't quite match our ambition to builds.

"The thing that's also lacking in the government's approach is a failure to recognise that paying a Further Education college lecturer £32,000 is not going to cut it to attract the best talent go to teach in schools across London."

There is a lack of skilled people to train the next generation of construction workers

Mr Copley said: "People like that are very, very important and there is a crisis there.

"I was often told previously that it was just that young people didn't want to go into construction.

"But actually it's more complex than that."

Earlier this month the Home Builders Federation, a trade body representing private sector developers, said London was expected to deliver 440,000 of the government's 1.5 million new homes target by 2030, but only 30,000 were completed in the past 12 months.