A study for the Department for Transport has highlighted that the UK shortage of highways and traffic engineers and transport planners could almost treble from 3,300 to 9,400 by 2013, despite the recession.

The Project Brunel study into the supply and demand of engineering, technical and planning skills within the transport industry has found that supply of skills is not keeping pace with demand.

The final report of the two-year study warns there are fewer entrants to the industry than there are leaving it, and this problem will get worse as the number of people retiring is predicted to treble by 2020.

The study, to be taken forward by a cross-industry group, calls for short-term measures to boost demand, including hiring more people from overseas by placing the occupations on the Home Office list of those that cannot be filled by resident workers (see below).

Employers are also challenged to improve rewards for employees to prevent hundreds from being lost to other sectors requiring project management and other generic skills.

Improving employment conditions would also allow the transport sector – including the rail industry – to attract 7,000 personnel this year and next from the wider construction sector. The report highlights that around 10% of those working in commercial development will be made redundant.

But in the longer-term, the Project Brunel report urges greater employer support for diploma and Masters courses in a bid to increase the potential supply of suitably qualified candidates.

In 2007, there was a net loss to the industry of approximately 750 people. One thousand retired and around the same number moved to other sectors or to jobs abroad. But only 1,300 people joined the industry. Around a third of the demand comes from highways and transport planning, the rest is for the rail industry.

Without action to increase supply – including by efficiencies such as standardising contracts to free up staff – the report estimates there would be a shortage of 6,290 highway engineers.

Steve Jackson of Franklin & Andrews, the consultants that produced the report, said: ‘The development of world-class skills is not a project that can be turned on or off according to economic cycles.’

But Alison Quant, the vice-president of the County Surveyors’ Society (CSS), said that the world had changed since Project Brunel had been commissioned. ‘At present, employers in the sector are having to lay off people.

‘Given the demographics, there will be a need for local authorities to be more pro-active in growing their own in future, but we’ll need to wait until after the General Election to find out what resources are required.’