THE UK’s building services sector has been tipped to help address the issue of youth unemployment.
The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has spoken out following the recent report by ex-cabinet minister Alan Milburn, highlighting the crisis caused by more than a million young people lacking jobs or training. The organisation believes these individuals could provide the industry with much needed digital and practical skills.
The report into NEETS (16-24-year-olds not in education, employment or training), commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, found that six in 10 NEETS have never had a job, but that 84% want to work or be in training but are ‘finding the door of opportunity closed’.
BESA has published a study of the building engineering sector’s skills challenges which highlighted several areas where the industry could take advantage of this ready-made pool of labour.
“Our industry has a growing problem with adopting new and emerging technologies, but NEETS are a fully digital generation – they have never known anything else,” said director of competence and compliance Jill Nicholls. “So, let’s solve our problem by harnessing all that under-exploited potential.”
The Labour Market Intelligence (LMI) study carried out for BESA by Pye Tait Consulting found that the rising use of heat pumps, smart building systems, and energy‑efficient retrofit solutions are reshaping the building services engineering skills landscape, alongside low carbon materials and sustainable design practices.
It also pointed to a lack of digital ‘literacy’ as a skills problem for many employers along with an ageing workforce struggling to keep up to date.
Employers told the survey there needed to be more relevant training provision and better promotion of the sector with trade bodies expected to lead these efforts. Over the next three years, the employers predicted further growth in deployment of heat pumps and smart heat networks. After that, the rise of AI-driven design and increasingly ‘smart’ and energy efficient technologies are expected to further reshape job roles.
“A concerted campaign to promote opportunities for young people in this, and other economically and socially critical sectors, is needed now to solve two of the UK’s most pressing problems: shortage of opportunities for NEETS and looming skills shortages for built environment employers,” Jill Nicholls added.
