Thousands choose not to renew CSCS cards

Thousands of workers are not bothering to renew their Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) membership and are working on site with expired cards.

CJ has learnt that the number of 'non renewers' is dramatically increasing across craft and manual trades. And this has forced the scheme's organisers to carry out an urgent review to see exactly how many workers are not renewing their cards after their five-year lifespan.

The news will come as a huge blow to organisations such as the Major Contractors' Group, which is calling for CSCS use across all its members' sites in the hope of obtaining a fully competent workforce.

The CSCS' organisers have refused to release the current number of non-renewers in recent months pending a forthcoming presentation of the situation by the CSCS' co-ordinator Peter Roberts to the scheme's management board.

There are currently 614,089 CSCS cardholders - a rise of 15,000 on last month.

And in a statement, the organisers deliberately played down any problem by stating that non-renewers were 'not seen as a major factor' and that a 5% loss of cardholders per annum was expected due to people leaving the industry or dying.

However, newly appointed CSCS chairman George Brumwell painted a very different picture when he revealed that the number of non-renewals was already passing the "few thousand" mark and was increasing rapidly.

Brumwell also admitted that the situation would result in many employees now working on site with expired cards, raising concern over inadequate safety and competence training.

"The increase is enough to be causing us a concern and will be one of the first areas of my attention now that I am in office," he told CJ. "The main problem is that clients are not asking to see workers' CSCS cards and people are starting to question the point in going through the whole process. This needs to be tackled immediately."

Another insider hit out at the the CSCS' statement, saying that connecting the number of people failing to renew their cards to those leaving the industry was "absolute nonsense".

"Why would they be taking this so seriously if it was down to something they could have originally predicted?" he asked.

The official also dashed other claims from the CSCS that a small proportion of non-renewal increases were because workers in the domestic market were not being asked to produce their cards.

"We have to remember that the CSCS was meant to be used by major contractors and there is very little CSCS use in the domestic market," he said.