Housebuilders urge teenagers to join industry

The Major Home Builders’ Group (MHBG) has joined forces with ConstructionSkills, the Sector Skills Council for Construction, to help young people gain a career in house building.

The lack of new housing is being worsened by a shortage of young people entering construction, particularly in skilled trades such as bricklaying, plastering and carpentry.

But now the MHBG has launched a new three-point programme of initiatives to increase the opportunities and training programmes available.

This three-point programme includes:

• in addition to its existing commitment to the traditional apprenticeship training, the MHBG and ConstructionSkills are jointly developing a new initiative to greatly increase the number of training places for skilled trades within the house building industry.
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• MHBG and ConstructionSkills are promoting the Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) through subcontractors with the aim of having a fully card-carrying workforce by 2007.
  
• MHBG and ConstructionSkills will work together to draw up a new flexible qualifications structure for residential site management that can be delivered in an efficient way to ensure site managers have the appropriate and relevant skills for the projects they are working on.

A spokesman for the House Builders Federation, said: “Britain's younger generation knows all about the problems caused by too few homes being built because it is making it increasingly difficult to get a foot on the housing ladder.

"Ultimately, however, part of the solution to this problem is in their hands. The younger generation is needed by our industry and the country to deliver the increasing number of new homes required.

" What our industry can and is doing, is to let them know of the huge potential awaiting them. There are excellent career possibilities in construction and with government pressing for a big increase in house building, the opportunities have never been better,” he said.