Clive Dickin, CEO of National Access & Scaffolding Confederation (NASC), tells Project Scotland about the importance of scaffolders to the overall UK economy
FEW people, regardless of political affiliations, disagree with the current UK government’s stated ambition to see the economy grow.
There may be some arguments about details such as the best levers to pull and the balance of regional demands, but growing the national economy is widely understood as a good thing.
Where we part company with the Westminster government is when senior figures in the cabinet make statements on building that suggest speed of construction matters more than anything else. We’d hardly call ourselves blockers, but NASC sees quality and safety as at least as important, if not more, than any other considerations.
For our members and their clients this is a matter of life and death. We also know that building will only have the positive impact we want it to have if it’s done to the highest possible quality.
There is no point putting up rubbish, building poor infrastructure or sub-standard housing. What we build today should be built with many tomorrows in mind.
For this to happen we need enough properly trained, experienced and skilled operatives with proven competence across the country and throughout the industry, including scaffolders. But we see little evidence of enough attention being paid to the skills crisis across the sector.
This is a crisis with the potential to drag down growth ambitions both sides of the border, which we are already seeing. One NASC member is reporting over 10% loss in growth as a result in lack of qualified staff.
It doesn’t feel like government thinking in Holyrood or Westminster is particularly joined up. The approach to skills and training and the impact on the economy always seems off.
We need to focus and work both on immediate solutions for the short-term, but also to put in place measures that will have an impact over the medium to long term.
South of the border, we’re delighted to be working with City & Guilds Training to deliver the Scaffolding Skills Bootcamps through our national network of CISRS centres.
Initiatives such as this are vital to build and upskill our home-grown talent. NASC has committed significant resource for Scottish scaffolding contractors through the NASC Talent solution at scaffoldingcareers.com. In the short run, we may need to look at ways to get back some of the overseas talent we lost due to the combination of Brexit and Covid. Adding scaffolding to the Shortage Occupation List would be a fine place to start.
As I’ve already highlighted, we’re fully behind the plans for growth, and applaud both the ambition and the role that construction projects in housing and infrastructure can play in achieving them. But my concern is that the evidence of the lack of joined-up thinking goes beyond the issue of skills.
In actions like increasing employer’s National Insurance Contributions and giving an above-inflation increase in the national minimum wage the chancellor has dented her business-friendly credentials.
These were body blows to small and medium-sized businesses in our sector wishing to invest and grow. These are due to come into force in a few weeks and they’ll have a massively negative impact, with some modest businesses expecting £100,000 bills that they can’t recover, as business they won was quoted before the budget.
Adding costs like extra National Insurance into the mix places a huge extra burden on those running scaffolding firms that are the first contractors on site when building projects get underway.
The sector wants to play its part and get behind the national mission for growth, but it wants to make sure the growth is built on high quality. The hidden risks when you cut corners in construction are well known, we only have to look at the recent changes to the Building Safety Act as a result of a large loss of life.
This is especially true with scaffolding. NASC highlights the best practice of its members through its annual Safety Report, if only the rest of the sector could be ’nothing to see here’, with the sector genuinely free of incidents or accidents to report.
In the meantime, it’s important that projects insist on competent contractors – ideally a NASC member who adheres to, and is audited to, NASC standards and guidance – that the scaffolding is correctly designed and that competent and experienced, CISRS-carded scaffolders are used to scaffold and provide access equipment.
