Labour’s 1.5m new homes pledge at risk as UK short of 25,000 bricklayers
Labour’s 1.5m new homes pledge at risk as UK short of 25,000 bricklayers
by JayR_97
Labour’s 1.5m new homes pledge at risk as UK short of 25,000 bricklayers
Labour’s 1.5m new homes pledge at risk as UK short of 25,000 bricklayers
by JayR_97
35 comments
Have they considered switching to flats which are far more efficient in terms of labour to units produced?
And the rest. Seems we’re short of plumbers, electricians, roofers, you name it.
Perhaps if we didn’t open the flood gates to cheap labour from the EU, and then stopped attracting future British generations into construction we wouldn’t be in this position. Thinking we could rely on cheap labour forever was always going to be disastrous.
Hmm.
Now, if only we had a Labour govt in power, we could begin moving towards forcing companies to train folks at home before importing foreign skill base. That way, we could help folks make a decent living again *and* fill shortages without worrying solely about being able to siphon money off for private entities…
Oh… wait. We do.
Well, good.
Maybe we should start publishing stories on that then, and stop pushing negativity like it’s crack, eh?
Do we really need 1.5m new homes that start at £270,000. It’s often the poorer people in society that are struggling to find houses, you know the ones that can’t afford to buy new builds. Maybe renovate all the boarded up terraced streets and make them council owned again, less brickies needed
Stop the bs then and make it attractive for young British lads to get into bricklaying and construction. Strong apprenticeships programmes, good rates of pay etc put your money where your mouth is and stop talking
Trades should be taught in schools, it should be an option that kids can pick.
Give them 5K tax free once they’ve qualified and been in the job for a year.
If only we had a group of young, motivated people who could train to work in these jobs. Imagine if some, or most, of those people had even travelled thousands of miles to get here and would actually do good work and fill the void, instead of being used as political footballs.
Given the quality of some homes built by the likes of Persimmon I’m surprised they even use actual brickies!
Time to train some up then. We know what number we need time to do a get britain building campaign, encourage people to take up the trade.
Ill come back to plastering for…£35 an hour any takers?
If we hadn’t pushed the higher education scam in the 00s maybe we’d have more.
I did two years at a Shoreditch college to be a plumber. In fact I did it twice because the first years the teacher didn’t show up.
The next time they had us signing off on practical work that we didn’t do.
Turns out that something like 5% of people who successfully complete the 4 year course go on to work in plumbing.
Then they say we have to bring in workers.
The absolute disrespect of showing up every morning to have your time wasted.
Train our own citizens? Or import a load of shoddy builders and tradesmen from third world countries? Ooh I wonder which one they’ll go for lol
People don’t seem to grasp the fact that working any trade is physically demanding and generally the rates of pay are crap. What’s appealing about crawling through dirty lofts, breathing in shit your whole life, getting cold and wet on site, wrecking your back and knees etc etc.
Until pay improves there will always be a shortage.
what if we *didn’t* build the same shite ugly brick semi-detached houses that we’ve been building for the last 15 years?
there are many other methods to building.., some of which even come with the advantage of not creating car-dependent deserts!
Turn the problem into an opportunity. There’s so much work to be done in this country that the incentives for working in trades in terms of prosperity and regular work can lead to a boom in people going into it. There was a push when I was growing up of higher education being the golden ticket and I went to university too. Encouraged by my dad (plumber) and grandfather (handyman) who also made sure I’d had at least enough of a DIY skillset that if I wanted to retrain I could have some confidence and if not at least I should know enough to handle things myself. But I’m no expert. Not licensed. I’m not going to tell an electrician how to do his job. And I commend those who do because it’s tough work but incredibly rewarding.
Labour might as well have promised to build 15 million houses because they had about as much chance of delivering on that as they do on the 1.5 million pledge.
Sounds like an easy way to create jobs, no? Win win?
This thinking is all backwards.
We don’t need bricklayers. We live in a temperate climate with 0 natural disasters.
What we need is new tech like 3d printed housing, and timber frame prefabs that can fix the issue in a timely manner, at a low cost, and without training a bunch of people just in time to be made redundant.
Of course there’s not enough builders, that’s entirely the point. If you’re not building houses you don’t have bunch of house builders just sitting around. If you create demand and start trying to build houses, the house builders will come.
Maybe a silly question, but why not focus on affordable, sustainable and safe modular housing – without the need for brick layers?
Plenty of young people want to work in construction. The problem is there is no route in for them. They go to college for a starter course then get told to apply for apprenticeships but there aren’t enough
It’s a disgrace
When people see the comparison between cushy office jobs with “chill rooms” climate control, coffee machines, cleanliness or dirty cold back busting finger breaking building sites where you are treated like shit and paid averagely I’m not surprised there’s a shortage.
Tends to happen when there’s no apprenticeships for the last 15yrs
they need to cut the school-uni pipeline. Trades are screaming and degrees are saturated.
We got the beams, we got the foundation, we got the columns, we got the walls. But we not got the Builders!
So we’ll have to shut the new homes off.
Praise the lord!
Silly question probably, but why are so many houses made from brick in the UK? In North America hardly any are made from brick. If we need a lot of houses now, and we’re short of bricklayers, why can’t we adapt the building methods?
Is this the result of Tony Blair’s policy to have more children go to university? And also the result of looking down on people who don’t go to university?
And if we import people, won’t they just add to the housing crisis?
Whoever would have thought ? I have had three sons and two grandsons who all wanted to get into the building trade. The trouble they all had getting apprenticeships and then jobs is ridiculous. There is no easy route from college to work, no incentive for builders to take on and train youngsters.
Can we try some more modern and efficient construction methods?
‘”if we can’t build 1.5 mln houses immediately, the entire project must be scrapped”.
The commentariat are so stupid sometimes.
My kids school has barista skills as a course choice subject.
Why the hell are we training kids to work in Starbucks but not in valuable trade skills?!
Stop building homes with bricks and start doing ICF, bricks and cavity walls are outdated building techniques that no other country uses…..
ICF and modern pre-fabbed wood composite walls pretty much allow you to build to passive house standards for free…
Get the OAP trained. I know they love to moan a bit, I’m sure they will be up for it though, for king and country. Come on lads, get to it.
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