London housing associations face shortfall of 2,600 skilled workers

Based on current recruitment trends, the coalition will have only 85% of the roofers and 78% of the surveyors needed to provide and maintain affordable housing across the capital over the next five years.

The report said that the workforce will be strained further by increased demand for retrofit and asset management pressures.

Average asset management workforce demand for the coalition over the next five years is 10,280 people a year, while the new build workforce demand is an average of 21,200 people a year.

The challenge will be particularly critical for specific trades and occupations, with the coalition alone requiring 8% to 10% of London’s roofers, carpenters and joiners.

Other asset management trades required over the next five years include plumbing and HVAC workers (with an average demand of 980 people a year) and technical office-based staff (average demand of 910 people a year).

The group outlined plans to promote the opportunities and benefits of working in the social housing sector and remove barriers to apprenticeships and skills development. It also called for work pipeline and funding certainty, to allow for long-term training programmes.

The report noted that the social housing sector “struggles to attract young talent”, with insufficient career advice in schools and limited awareness of the roles available.

Elsewhere, short-term procurement contracts hinder contractors’ ability to invest in long-term training and skills, while the quality of apprenticeships in social housing is “inconsistent” and training programmes are “limited in scope”.

Inside Housing has made the sector’s recruitment challenge the focus of its Housing Hires campaign. The campaign aims to promote the sector as a place to work and share best practice about how to recruit and retain staff in social housing.

Housing associations currently build a quarter of London’s new homes. However, Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief executive of L&Q, said: “Our workforce is ageing, retiring, and not being replaced by newly trained staff. This growing challenge threatens the provision of genuinely affordable, warm and safe housing in the capital.”

Elly Hoult, chief operating officer and deputy chief executive at Peabody, said: “There is no ‘quick fix’ to this issue. It needs a long-term plan, with organisations across the sector working together to bring about significant change.

“This is an important first step and we welcome more organisations to join the London Homes Coalition. Together, we’re finding ways to get more people from all backgrounds into construction jobs, while addressing the skills gap that increasingly becomes a barrier as we aim to build more homes and refurbish many others.”

Currently, women represent just 14% of the construction workforce in London, with around 2% in trade occupations. Meanwhile, ethnic minorities make up 24% of the construction workforce in the capital.

In June, Ms Fletcher-Smith told the Housing 2024 conference in Manchester that a lack of engineers and scaffolders was holding back housing associations’ fire safety remediation efforts.

She said: “Even if I had all the money I need, I simply couldn’t get the right number of fire engineers or – the biggest shortage of labour in London – scaffolders. And if you’re dealing with towers above 18 metres, you need scaffolders.”