Whitehall’s ‘ridiculous pledge on new homes will exacerbate shortage’

07 February 2008
 
The Government’s housing Green Paper pledge to build three million new homes by 2020 will exacerbate the skills shortage facing the built-environment industry, it has been claimed.

The Academy for Sustainable Communities has revealed its prediction that the shortage in engineers will widen to 17% over the next four years does not include the Government’s new commitment to increase housing supply from 185,000 a year now to 240,000 by 2016.

Jayne Crosse, director of strategy and practice, said the Whitehall objective would ‘create new pressure for skilled engineers, which could cause increases in construction inflation’.

The academy has been tasked by the Department for Communities and Local Government with ensuring that England has enough built-environment professionals ‘to ensure speedy, high-quality delivery of the Government’s goals’. It has warned that the shortage in engineers ‘is driven by significant increases in demand’.

Despite improvements in the supply of engineers, the gap will widen to 17%, it said last year, an estimate which will now need to be revised upwards in response to the housing Green Paper.

Martin Richards, of the Transport Planning Society executive committee, said: ‘These housing plans are ridiculous. Does the DCLG understand what the infrastructure requirements are? Has it considered whether they’re consistent with the skills that are available?’

The DCLG is considering responses to its consultation on the Green Paper, which closed in October. But it stated that it was ‘committed’ to ‘a major drive to ensure we have the skills to meet future demand’.

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