Anna Scothern is chief executive of the National Home Improvement Council and chair of both the Construction Leadership Council repairs, maintenance and improvement (RMI) working group, and Construction Skills Mission Board RMI skills group<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
The national conversation about improving our homes often begins with technology and targets. But behind every upgraded boiler, insulated wall or efficient window stands a person \u2013 a tradesperson whose knowledge, confidence and pride determine whether progress is real or rhetorical.<\/span><\/p>\n Across the UK, that workforce is shrinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cCapacity to repair, maintain and improve housing stock is eroding, just when demand is set to rise sharply\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n More than 80 per cent of those keeping Britain\u2019s homes warm, safe and efficient are small or micro-businesses, and most of their owners are over 50.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n New entrants are scarce, and the streams that once attracted young people into building trades have thinned to a trickle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The result is a quiet crisis: the capacity to repair, maintain and improve the nation\u2019s housing stock is eroding, just when demand is set to rise sharply.<\/span><\/p>\n It is tempting to describe this only as a \u201cretrofit skills shortage\u201d, but that framing is too narrow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The challenge is not a specialist niche that a short-term training scheme can fix. It is a structural gap in the everyday workforce that looks after our 29 million homes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If we treat decarbonisation as an add-on, we will forever be chasing a separate \u201cgreen\u201d workforce. The real opportunity is to make low-carbon know-how intrinsic to every competent installer, builder and engineer, so that decarbonisation simply becomes business-as-usual.<\/span><\/p>\n Through its membership and work with the Construction Leadership Council and Construction Skills Mission Board (CSMB), the National Home Improvement Council (NHIC) has been gathering evidence from right across the home-improvement sector.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Our members, from merchants and manufacturers to accreditation bodies and consumer schemes, have contributed data showing where policy, perception and practical delivery fall out of step.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The insight is consistent: the people already inside Britain\u2019s homes are the key to scaling quality improvement and lowering carbon at pace, but they need coherent systems that respect their professionalism and reduce the friction of doing the right thing.<\/span><\/p>\n When these values are applied to the skills agenda, they become practical levers for change.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nGap between policy and practice<\/span><\/h3>\n