{"id":532772,"date":"2025-11-17T12:55:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T12:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=532772"},"modified":"2025-11-17T13:05:23","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T13:05:23","slug":"urgent-upskilling-needed-to-hit-housing-and-environmental-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/sustainability\/urgent-upskilling-needed-to-hit-housing-and-environmental-targets-17-11-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Urgent upskilling needed to hit housing and green targets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Urgent green upskilling of construction workers is needed if the government is to hit its 1.5 million housebuilding target as well as its environmental, nature and net zero goals, a report has warned.<\/span><\/p>\n

Contractors need to develop a raft of skills in their workforce to use new low-carbon materials and technologies, parliament\u2019s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said in its <\/span>Environmental Sustainability and Housing Growth<\/span><\/i> report, released yesterday (16 November).<\/span><\/p>\n

It added that housebuilders need to adopt digital technologies, interact with planners and ecologists, work on brownfield sites and retrofit existing homes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report also flagged up a muddy picture of exactly how many staff, and in which trades, would be needed to meet demand in housebuilding.<\/span><\/p>\n

The EAC inquiry, which began a year ago, highlighted the lack of workers and relevant skills among the construction workforce, while also noting a \u201cpressing need to train ecologists with a working knowledge of the planning system\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the EAC acknowledges recent moves to attract more workers into the industry, such as the creation of the Construction Skills Mission Board and an additional \u00a3745m investment in construction skills, the report said more action was needed.<\/span><\/p>\n

It called for the government to provide annual estimates of the number of workers needed to meet homebuilding targets; the projected workforce wastage to establish a baseline for recruitment and anticipate the impacts on home building; projections on new recruits specifically in housebuilding; and contingency plans if workforce levels are not sufficient.<\/span><\/p>\n

The report also flagged up the need for planning authorities to demand whole-life carbon assessments (WLCA) for housing developments, recommending that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors\u2019 WLCA methodology should be used.<\/span><\/p>\n

The EAC noted that, currently, only 23 per cent of English local planning authorities require WLCAs \u2013 which drops to 13 per cent if London boroughs are excluded. This, too, would mean additional upskilling for housebuilders.<\/span><\/p>\n

With low-carbon materials potentially costing more \u2013 and introducing greater risk due to contractors being unfamiliar with them \u2013 the EAC suggests that the government should consider financial incentives to encourage their use.<\/span><\/p>\n

It also repeated the call that the industry has been making for decades to reduce the amount of VAT paid on construction materials for retrofit.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Urgent green upskilling of construction workers is needed if the government is to hit its 1.5 million housebuilding target as well as its environmental, nature and net zero goals, a report has warned. Contractors need to develop a raft of skills in their workforce to use new low-carbon materials and technologies, parliament\u2019s Environmental Audit Committee …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34087,"featured_media":360440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability"],"yoast_head":"\nUrgent upskilling needed to hit housing and green targets | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Urgent green upskilling of construction workers is needed if the government is to hit its 1.5 million housebuilding target as well as its environmental,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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