Construction’s workforce challenges have evolved. The institutions supporting the industry in meeting those challenges must evolve too, writes Tim Balcon, CEO of the Construction Industry Training Board
An article in the last version of PBC Today, written by CIOB’s CEO Dr Victoria Hills, explored the construction skills challenge and how it can be addressed. The hypothesis that construction is facing a skills challenge is certainly correct, and I welcome the contribution to the debate about how we build the skilled, resilient workforce construction needs. The industry must recruit, train and retain hundreds of thousands of workers if it is to deliver the homes, infrastructure and economic growth expected of it over the coming decade.
Where I would challenge the argument is in its underlying premise. The industry’s skills problems are no longer the same as those faced when the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) was created, and a modern training board must be equipped to address the challenges of today, not recreate the solutions of the past.
Now, construction’s two biggest workforce challenges are attracting enough new entrants and ensuring workforce competence. Everything else stems from those priorities.
Construction’s evolving workforce challenges
The recruitment challenge is well understood. CITB’s own forecasts point to the need for more than 200,000 additional workers over the next five years. At the same time, the industry continues to wrestle with an ageing workforce, increasing demand and competition for talent from other sectors.
Equally important is competence. Since Grenfell, there has been a profound shift in the industry’s understanding of its responsibilities. The debate is no longer simply about training volumes or qualification numbers, but about ensuring that individuals possess the knowledge, skills, behaviours and experience required to perform their roles safely, effectively and professionally throughout their careers.
Viewed through that lens, many of the activities criticised as examples of CITB straying beyond its “core purpose” are in fact central to addressing construction’s biggest workforce challenges.
The development of occupational standards and workforce pathways are not peripheral activities or examples of bureaucratic expansion. They are the foundations upon which competence is built.
Occupational standards define what good looks like. They establish the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for effective performance and provide the framework upon which qualifications, apprenticeships, assessment and professional development are constructed. If it’s not CITB doing this work, who should?
The suggestion that such work could simply be undertaken elsewhere also overlooks a practical reality. Developing and maintaining occupational standards, competence frameworks and workforce pathways requires sustained investment and industry-wide coordination. These are not activities that naturally attract commercial funding, nor are they easily delivered by fragmented interests acting independently. It is easy to suggest the work should sit elsewhere. It is much harder to identify an organisation with both the mandate and the means to deliver it.
Investment must adapt
The wider argument that CITB should return to a more traditional “levy in, skills out” model is also one that has been examined before. Indeed, one of the most significant reviews of CITB in recent years, undertaken by Mark Farmer, challenged precisely that notion. The review recognised that construction’s workforce problems are rooted in structural market failures which cannot be solved simply by collecting levy and reimbursing employers for training activity.
A purely transactional funding model may be attractive to those seeking a direct return on their levy contribution, but it does little to address collective challenges that no individual employer can solve alone. Workforce forecasting, careers outreach, apprenticeship development, occupational standards, competence frameworks and labour market intelligence all exist because they serve a wider industry purpose. They are examples of collective investment designed to tackle problems that affect everyone, but which are difficult for any single organisation to fund or coordinate on its own.
None of this is to dismiss legitimate concerns raised by SMEs. Construction remains overwhelmingly a sector of small and micro businesses, and those employers must see themselves represented in the decisions taken on their behalf. Perceptions of poor value, limited influence and insufficient representation deserve serious consideration.
But there is a difference between improving how levy investment is governed and delivered and narrowing the scope of intervention to little more than grant administration.
The industry needs more people to enter construction, more people to stay and more people to become competent throughout their careers. Those challenges require strategic interventions that stretch beyond the administration of grants and training payments. CITB has not cut its overall funding. It has prioritised it to meet these specific challenges. For example, the budget for the 2026-27 financial year has an additional £38m of funding for new entrant training.
Focusing on the right priorities
If we are serious about delivering homes, infrastructure, productivity improvements and safer buildings, we should be cautious about advocating a return to familiar models simply because they are familiar. The industry’s challenges have evolved. The institutions that support it must evolve too.
The question should not be whether CITB has moved beyond its historic role. The question should be whether it is focused on the right priorities for the industry’s future. In a sector facing chronic labour shortages, increasing demand and an unprecedented focus on competence, attracting new entrants and building a competent workforce are not distractions from CITB’s purpose. They are its purpose.
