New survey lays bare the difficulty Londoners and developers face in finding skilled workers for key tasks, reports Kumail Jaffer, Local Democracy Reporter
Housebuilding in Leyton
The extent of how London’s construction skills shortage is slowing down building in the capital has been laid bare.
New polling from Fix Radio’s 2025 National Construction Audit, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), shows that more than a tenth of Londoners have waited for a handyman or electrician for over a year. Other figures from the dataset show that less than 5% of residents managed to get a roofer within a month, dropping to 3% with bricklayers.
The knock-on effect of this is also highlighted, with 13% of respondents to the survey saying they delayed moving into their proposed new home because construction was not completed on time due to a shortage of tradespeople.
The same proportion chose to buy an older property instead of a new build because they were told the build would take significantly longer than planned. Meanwhile, a tenth were forced to withdraw from purchasing a home altogether as building delays meant their mortgage offer expired.
Clive Holland, of Fix Radio, told the LDRS: “The shortage of skilled trades in London is having a noticeable impact on the pace of building, repairs and maintenance across the capital.
“Demand for work is consistently outstripping the number of people available to do it, and that gap has been widening over time. Many tradespeople tell me that working in London has become increasingly challenging.
“Daily charges, higher operating costs, the risk of tool and van theft, and general safety concerns all play a part. A number of people I know have chosen to move to areas like the Midlands or Bristol, simply because the day-to-day pressures are easier to manage outside the capital.”
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan, who has been tasked with ensuring 88,000 homes are built in the capital every year for the next decade by ministers, oversaw just 11,600 new properties last year.
In September his deputy mayor for housing Tom Copley admitted there was a skills “crisis” in the sector and suggested he feared there were neither enough trained workers nor teachers to tutor the next generation.
Holland said the lack of training has, overall, lowered the quality of any homes that do end up being built.
“While efforts to bring more young people into the trades are positive, fast-track schemes can struggle to provide the depth of experience required in safety-critical roles such as electrical and gas work,” he said.
“We’ve already seen a rise in snagging and remedial work over the last few years, which suggests quality is being affected.
“London’s housing challenge isn’t only about the number of homes, it’s also about having the right workforce in place to build and maintain them. Supporting tradespeople and making it viable for them to stay in the city would make a real difference.”
Holland called on the mayor to scrap Ultra Low Emission Zone and Congestion Charge costs for tradespeople to make it more cost-effective to operate in the city, as well as strengthening enforcement around hunting down tool theft.
“Anything that makes it easier, safer and more viable for tradespeople to operate in London is likely to speed up building and repairs, and that could have a meaningful impact on easing delays across the city’s housing system,” he concluded.
Earlier this year a government spokesperson told the LDRS: “Years of underinvestment in skills has created a dire shortage of construction workers – workers this country desperately needs if we are to meet our pledge to build 1.5million homes over the course of this parliament.
“Through our Plan for Change we have taken decisive action to build up essential skills in the construction industry and are providing £625million of funding to create up to 60,000 more engineers, bricklayers, electricians, and joiners by 2029.”
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