Foreign civil engineers face curbs

Foreign civil engineers will find it harder to get work in the UK following recommendations to remove the profession from the government's list of sectors suffering from skills shortages.

The Migration Advisory Committee is recommending the removal of general civil engineers "in response to changing economic circumstances".

Once the decision is rubber-stamped by the government, contractors will have to prove no suitable UK civil engineers could fill any vacancies before employing candidates from abroad.

The 'resident labour market test' applies to all professions not on the list and jobs must be advertised to domestic workers for at least a week to prove contractors are carrying out genuine searches for UK workers.

Only very specialist disciplines like geotechnical engineers and contaminated land engineers are deemed to still be suffering shortages allowing employers to bypass the labour market test.

The latest cull of construction professions from the list follows the removal of quantity surveyors and project managers earlier this year.

A Home Office spokesman said: "Approximately 170,000 jobs on our September 2008 list were in construction-related occupations - mainly project managers, civil engineers and quantity surveyors.

"Now only a few very specialist jobs remain, with employment estimated to be in the low thousands."

Jobs outside construction that are on the list because of shortages include meat boners and trimmers, ballet dancers and orchestral musicians.

Committee chairman David Metcalf said: "Fewer that 500,000 jobs, less than 2% of all UK employees, are in occupations on our recommended shortage lists. The corresponding figure a year ago was approximately 700,000."

One construction recruitment specialist said: "This makes sense because civil engineers are hardly difficult to find in the current market.

"A few years ago I had to ship experts in from South Africa because of the domestic shortages, but the recession has totally turned that around."