The UK's Construction Skills Shortage Isn't Slowing Down, So What Are Contractors Actually Doing About It?

Britain's construction sector is facing a squeeze from both directions. Demand for housing delivery keeps climbing, but the workforce needed to deliver it is shrinking. Earlier this year, Jewson and STARK UK launched their "Let's Get Britain Building NOW!" campaign, warning that a mix of company insolvencies, sole traders leaving the trade, and chronic skills shortages are pushing the industry towards a genuine crisis point.

The numbers back it up. Jewson's own Trade Trends research found that over half of builders and tradespeople think the skills shortage is going to get worse, not better. Almost one in five said they'll struggle to take on as much work as a direct result.

What this means for contractors on the ground

For Tier 1 contractors delivering social housing programmes, this isn't an abstract industry statistic. It shows up as jobs that can't be resourced, response deadlines that get harder to hit, and pipelines of work sitting there without the trades to deliver them.

It's telling that a good number of builders and tradespeople are already responding to the shortage in the same way, by turning to subcontractors and new talent routes to plug the gap, rather than waiting for the workforce pipeline to catch up on its own.

Where the opportunity sits

The shortage isn't going away this year. But contractors who build reliable relationships with vetted subcontractors now are in a far stronger position than those scrambling every time a new job lands.

That's the role Empower Consulting plays. We connect pre-vetted subcontractors with Tier 1 contractors delivering social housing work, so that when capacity is tight, and it will be, there's already a route to the right trade rather than a search that starts from zero.

If the skills shortage is affecting how you're resourcing work, we'd be glad to talk it through.