Persimmon to step up recruitment of ex-military as bricklayers and joiners
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Version 0 of 1. Britain’s biggest housebuilding firm has stepped up its recruitment of former military personnel as bricklayers and joiners and called on the rest of the industry to follow suit to combat severe skill shortages. Between 12,000 and 15,000 people leave the armed services each year. Persimmon’s chief executive, Jeff Fairburn, believes they are a talent pool the housebuilding industry should tap into. “Those individuals are very keen to learn. It’s a skill for life,” he said. Persimmon has already taken on 100 former military personnel to train primarily in bricklaying, where the lack of skilled workers has reached a record high, according to the latest construction survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Persimmon wants to increase that number to 500 a year, alongside the 100 school-leavers it takes on as apprentices annually. The ex-services recruits can be trained in 12 months to two years, whereas traditional apprenticeships for school-leavers can take three years or more. Persimmon hopes to have a new training centre in south-east England up and running by April and intends to open another one in the Midlands. The latest spurt in housebuilding has led to deepening shortages of skilled workers, after 400,000 people were laid off during the recession. Many went overseas or switched to different jobs such as driving taxis. Increasing workloads mean 200,000 construction jobs will need to be filled over the next five years, according to the Construction Industry Training Board. On top of this, 400,000 workers are expected to retire in the next five to 10 years. Brian Berry, head of the Federation of Master Builders (FMB), said the industry faced a “skills timebomb”. The FMB will pilot an adult training scheme with Gateshead college, near Newcastle upon Tyne, starting in March, where 15-20 former military and unemployed people will be retrained using funds from the Local Enterprise Partnership and the Skills Funding Agency. They will then be placed with small local construction firms. The FMB’s services director, Steve Laurence, who drew up the scheme, said the first cohort would learn the basics of “all the biblical trades” in one year – bricklaying, joinery, roofing, floorlaying, plastering and painting – and gain an NVQ level 2 qualification, with the opportunity to specialise after. He is in talks with other training providers in Hull and Leeds, but said the problem is that funding has to be negotiated each time at local level. “There is no pot of money nationally for this.” The FMB is working with the Department for Work and Pensions on several initiatives. They include efforts to keep older construction workers involved. Many want to continue working well into their 60s and could work part-time, including mentoring young apprentices, or change to less arduous roles, the FMB said. Housebuilders have also brought in bricklayers from other European countries to plug gaps. “There is the possibility of doing a bit more in that regard,” Fairburn said. Persimmon said it built 13,509 new homes last year, 17% more than in 2013. Annual revenues climbed 23% to £2.6bn. Fairburn expects another good year, despite uncertainty about the outcome of the general election in May. Housebuyers tend to be cautious around election time. This is a “slight concern”, he said, but the market is underpinned by the recent cuts in stamp duty and an array of attractive mortgage products. BT has recruited more than 1,600 former servicemen and women as engineers to work on its fibre broadband rollout over the past three years. |