It has been widely known for a number of years that the UK has a housing shortage and the National Housing Federation has reported 460,000 units were complete between 2011-2014. Forecasts at that time predicted that 970,000 were needed.
The CITB has unveiled a timely new campaign named GoConstruction in order to help recruit 220,000 new people into construction over the next five years and has spent 1.3M on its launch. As part of the launch, it has put together a video to showcase the range of careers on offer in construction to those outside the sector. A promising move which has been initiated to fill the Management and Skills shortage in the Construction Industry to meet the predicted expectations set by Government which is saying in the housing sector we need 1 Million new homes by 2020.
However, it is also widely known that this shortage of housing is again pushing up average house prices to new records with the increase in Sep 2015 being the largest monthly increase since September 2002, and overall prices up (estimated) by 5% in 2015 with London seeing the biggest rise of 6% and that these continuing price escalations are unsustainable … but are demand driven.
By quickly doing the maths, we can see that the Housing Construction Sector needs to double. I don’t know how realistic that is?
Putting the politics and financial stability of the country to the side, what can be seen is that in the immediate future, house building is offering a secure future. In particular it is in our experience that residential House Building Site Managers with CITB / CSCS Black Manager Cards are in great demand are are very well remunerated for their skills and expertise.
