Recruitment boom fuels hopes of a recovery in UK construction
BRITISH builders have been on a hiring spree in recent months, with some construction firms struggling to find skilled workers and even facing shortages of materials as both housing and commercial developments spring up.
Recruitment group Hays said net fees from private sector construction and property jobs rose 21 per cent in the last three months of the year.
“We have done more with UK architects in the last six months than we have in the entire four years previously,” finance director Paul Venables told City PM
Reed chairman James Reed said property and construction postings were up 74 per cent last year, with architects, chartered surveyors and site managers all in demand across the country. Reed said the boom was part of an overall improvement in hiring – last Monday was the site’s busiest day in five years, with 8,227 jobs posted.
Builders say that shortages of skills and material are now a bigger problem than at any time since the middle of 2006, according to a survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors out today.