General Discussion

As housebuilding and immigration seem to be two very hot topics I thought I'd post this that

I've just come across in one of the professional housing magazines.

The Federation of Master Builders has warned the government a new immigration system must provide the construction sector with enough skilled workers.

Brian Berry,chief executive of the FMB, said: "The UK construction industry has been heavily reliant on migrant workers from Europe for decades now ­ at present, 12% of the British construction workers are of non-UK origin. The majority of these workers are from EU countries such as Poland, Romania and Lithuania and they have helped the construction industry bounce back from the economic downturn when 400,000 skilled workers left our industry, most of which did not return. It is now the Government¹s responsibility to ensure that the free-flowing tap of migrant workers from Europe is not turned off. If Ministers want to meet their house building and infrastructure objectives, they have to ensure that the new system of immigration is responsive to the needs of industry."

... and the housebuilders are being hit by the stock market prices.  

Its not the governments responsibility to back up the house building industry. Like the car builders, miners, steel workers, ship builders and general manufacturing industries. If they cannot conduct their businesses in a profitable manner and have surficient resources to train the staff they need, then they go down the pan with all the others. They got greedy and replaced British workers with semi-skilled eastern europeans with unknown and un recognised qualifications and now thats their problem. Support the Colleges like the new UTC in Newton Abbot, train new construction workers and pay them the right ammount of wage. They also need to re-consider their construction methods away from the cheap and nasty glorified sheds packed onto as little land as posible. Also re-instate the British Standard 10 year NHBC warranties.  

Also, there are many of our more experienced, senior, skilled workers who have not been able to get on to building sites due to the current constraints around CSCS cards which for some require apprenticeship or NVQ which after 30+ years of doing and running some of these jobs is and has been an insult. So, most of these individuals have either changed occupation, gone into early retirement or just do small private jobs. The workers are certainly there with exceptional experience ( grandfathers rights I believe) just drop the ridiculous red-tape and allow them on the sites and you won't need so many workers from outside our country.