The Government’s ambitious 1.5m homes housing target was widely welcomed by the house-building industry and NHBC. While the Government moves forward to address the barriers posed by the planning system through its Planning and Infrastructure Bill, another pressing issue threatens the target: the industry skills shortage.
Estimates of the number of new construction recruits required vary, with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) placing the figure at 239,000 needed by 2029 to meet demand. Calculations factoring in the additional workforce requirements of constructing the new towns initiative yield larger figures. What we know for certain is that the figure is large and current apprenticeship throughput won’t produce the additional skilled workers to deliver the numbers needed to reach 1.5m homes.
Growing the construction workforce faces several challenges for both the supply and demand for skills. The 1.5m homes target runs parallel to government commitments on retrofit and national infrastructure, whose workforce is generally drawn from the same pool. At the same time, the make-up of the workforce continues to change with the proportion of workers aged 50 and over increasing from around one in four in 2005 to one in three by 2024.
While our need for new skilled construction workers increases, firms are struggling to find the skills necessary to meet extant demand, leading to delays and rising costs. The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) State of Trade Survey from H1 2025 found that 61% of respondents reported being affected by a lack of skilled tradespeople, 49% said that this caused job delays and 23% said it had led to job cancellations.
Importantly for homebuyers, sub-standard skills and shortages may impact quality. When builders are forced to settle for less skilled tradespeople, there is a heightened risk that quality suffers and the number of defects increase.
Data compiled in the NHBC Foundation’s recent report Maintaining quality in the design and construction of 1.5m homes illustrates the historic relationship between the volume of home completions and customer satisfaction, with satisfaction tending to decrease as volume increases. Ensuring an adequate supply of skills will be crucial in breaking that trend.
Unfortunately, the existing skills system fails to deliver the numbers necessary to meet that need. According to Department of Education data, approximately 24,000 construction apprenticeships were started in England in the most recent year. However, once you account for achievement rates, only around half of these apprentices complete their courses.
Perceptions of construction are often cited as the cause for the struggling workforce but 24,000 apprenticeship starts is a sizeable number. We need to look more closely at why these apprentices are dropping out of their courses, failing to meet the required standard or deciding not to enter the industry at the end of their course.
At NHBC we believe that we have managed to square that circle. In 2020, we launched our first training hub in Tamworth, initially focusing on bricklaying Level 2 qualifications. This training hub took a unique approach to construction training, guided by the needs of house builders. The hub mimics real site conditions, consisting of an open space with a large slab of concrete, covered only by a canopy and surrounded by cabins with teaching rooms and a canteen facility.
Apprentices begin their learning with a five-week block at the hub, as opposed to the usual day release, starting and finishing at the times they would on a real site. They are required to wear the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) they would on a construction site and follow the same safety protocols. This differs from traditional apprenticeships, where traditional providers (understandably) are restricted by the size of their estate.
Our hubs do not have the same restrictions. The Tamworth hub was set up on land on an existing Redrow development as it was being constructed. The ‘pop-up’ nature of the hubs allows us to choose locations that replicate the site experience as closely as possible.
After spending weeks learning essential skills, apprentices go on site for ten weeks with the ability to confidently lay bricks and contribute from day one. This allows them to build relationships, take on responsibility and makes an apprentice a more attractive option for employers.
This approach has yielded exciting results. Our completion rate is an industry-leading 80-90%, with the majority of our apprentices continuing to work with their employers. If these figures were replicated across the industry thousands more skilled tradespeople would be entering the construction sector every year.
NHBC’s initial success at Tamworth prompted the opening of an additional three hubs in Cambridge, Newcastle and Hull.
NHBC is a non-profit distributing company whose core purpose is to raise standards in house building. This has enabled us to reinvest £100m towards the creation of 12 larger multi-skill hubs, each two thirds of the size of a football pitch and offering broader trades needed within the local area such as bricklaying, groundwork and site carpentry, with timber fame erection planned for later hubs. Once all 12 hubs are open, we expect to have capacity for 3,000 apprentice starts every year.
Yet challenges persist; the industry would benefit greatly from a more flexible growth and skills levy and small employers still struggle to engage with the skills system, but the hub model has potential to be replicated across a swathe of trades and revolutionise construction skills.
Our team stands ready to share our expertise with any organisation wishing to replicate our success.
David Campbell is the Chief Operating Officer of NHBC, the UK’s largest new homes warranty and insurance provider. NHBC is a non-profit distributing company whose core purpose is to raise standards in house-building.
You can hear more from David Campbell at Labour Housing Group’s fringe at Labour Party Conference in partnership with NHBC: How can the Labour Government solve the housing skills shortage? (Monday 29th: 17:00 – 18:00)