Greenbelt ?

[fugtifino]

Local Government Association:

 

Number of unbuilt homes with planning permission hits record levels, LGA says

 

http://www.local.gov.uk/daily-news-headlines/-/journal_content/56/10180/7634296/NEWS

 

Shelter's view:

 

http://blog.shelter.org.uk/2016/12/land-banking-whats-the-story-part-1/

[asperity]

That's what I was asking. So the next question is do we have sufficient bricklayers, bricks, roof trusses etc etc etc to build all those houses?

[asperity]

A quick Google reveals that there are hundreds of bricklayer vacancies waiting to be filled, which indicates a shortage.

[observer]

Probably not in terms of indigenous workers, they need to be trained; but while we wait for the politicians to get off their backsides on that one and start a comprehensive programme of education and training for the workplace, rather than encouraging singing and dancing; I'm sure we'll have enough E/Europeans to suffice. !  

[asperity]

The situation is similar for electricians and plumbers, hundreds of vacancies waiting to be filled. I'm sure we can't empty Eastern Europe of all their skilled tradesmen, after all they need houses building as well you know. So it's all very well saying we've got x thousands of acres of land with planning permission available if we don't have the materials and manpower available to do the building.

 

No point in blaming the politicians for encouraging the youth of today to all be dancers/singers/film and TV stars, blame the feminised educational establishment.

[observer]

" can't empty Eastern Europe of all their skilled tradesmen "  , you sure we haven't already ? !      Sorry Asp; your starting to sound like the civil servant, who gives the politician every excuse for not doing something; our problem is, we haven't even got the politicians                     motivated yet !

[asperity]

All I'm doing is pointing out the obvious flaws to your argument that all we have to do is "start building". Building new houses is going on all around us (and I don't mean just here in Warrington), and if you look at these building sites you will see signs advertising for the likes of bricklayers and other tradesmen. These people don't grow on trees and, while I accept and agree with your arguments about the general failure of this country to train young people in the trades we require for progress, we are where we are.

 

A point that does occur to me is that have we, having been members of the EU for so long, become reliant on importing tradesmen from other EU members to the detriment of training our own?

[fugtifino]

(from#123) Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that...

 

(from #128) ...there are hundreds of bricklayer vacancies waiting to be filled?

 

 

Looks like you're trying to suggest that the housing shortage is due only to a lack of skilled tradespeople.

 

It may be a factor, but the LGA, Shelter and Gov.UK seem to think otherwise:

 

https://www.mortgagestrategy.co.uk/government-will-not-look-way-land-banking/

 

altrightnutjoballiance.org have not yet addressed the issue, as far as I'm aware.

[Davy51]

A case for the old Industry Training Boards to be reinstated methinks ready to take advantage of our potentially booming future.

[fugtifino]

They're still there, though now called Sector Skills Councils:

 

http://fisss.org/sector-skills-council-body/directory-of-sscs/

[asperity]

What are you suggesting Fugs? That builders are advertising all these job vacancies as some sort of cover for not building more houses, or perhaps they are trying to get rid of their ill gotten gains by spending it on needless adverts? That would be some conspiracy theory wouldn't it? :lol: :lol:

[fugtifino]

I'm asking where's the evidence of all this demand?

 

For example, a search for vacancies for bricklayers in Cheshire on the government website produces three results.

 

https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/JobSearch/PowerSearch.aspx?rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&tjt=bricklayer&where=cheshire&q

 

By contrast, a search in the same area for customer service opportunities produces four pages of results.

 

https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/JobSearch/PowerSearch.aspx?rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&tjt=Customer%20Service&where=cheshire&pg=1

 

It's the latter where I'd say there is a demand.

 

_{Those links will time out at some point.}

[asperity]

It depends where you cherrypick your information from:

 

Here is the result of a 1 second search on Google for example:

 

https://www.indeed.co.uk/Bricklayer-jobs

 

And there's loads more of these agencies advertising.

 

Now I'm not saying that all the experts (has-beens under pressure ) are mistaken, but it seems to me that builders are crying out for skilled tradesmen for their building projects. As usual the truth is out there but no-one is willing to divulge it.

[observer]

How long does it take the Military to train a tradesman?  So recruitment and training isn't a problem, if the political will is there. The building of housing for need isn't  a theory, it's all been done before in 1945; and the evidence is all around us in our ex-Council Estates.

[asperity]

Pass :unsure:

[observer]

Less than 12 months; plenty of time to provide the required skills base and the re-introduction of Local Authority Direct Works Dept; to carry out the building programme, could by-pass the reluctant private sector. Add to this legislation to take back land banks into public ownership at there original price, and we can get the show on the road.

[fugtifino]

It depends where you cherrypick your information from:

 

Here is the result of a 1 second search on Google for example:

 

https://www.indeed.co.uk/Bricklayer-jobs

 

And there's loads more of these agencies advertising.

 

Now I'm not saying that all the experts (has-beens under pressure ) are mistaken, but it seems to me that builders are crying out for skilled tradesmen for their building projects. As usual the truth is out there but no-one is willing to divulge it.

 

I'm not cherry picking which is exactly why I used the gov.uk website. It has to maintain some level of respectability and reliability, it's free for employers to use, if there's any unemployed bricklayers out there claiming jobseekers allowance they have to use that site to search and apply for jobs. And I was very specific with the parameters of the search so that any duplicates would be easily visible.

 

There's thousands of job search sites out there but there's a lot of dodgy operators included in that.

 

Here's what someone has to say about Indeed:

 

https://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/indeedcom-c437732.html

[asperity]

I'm asking where's the evidence of all this demand?

 

For example, a search for vacancies for bricklayers in Cheshire on the government website produces three results.

 

https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/JobSearch/PowerSearch.aspx?rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&tjt=bricklayer&where=cheshire&q

 

By contrast, a search in the same area for customer service opportunities produces four pages of results.

 

https://jobsearch.direct.gov.uk/JobSearch/PowerSearch.aspx?rad=20&rad_units=miles&pp=25&sort=rv.dt.di&vw=b&re=134&setype=2&tjt=Customer%20Service&where=cheshire&pg=1

 

It's the latter where I'd say there is a demand.

 

_{Those links will time out at some point.}

There again cherrypicking results for Cheshire for the last 2 days only gives 3 vacancies. Now try extending that to England for, say, the last week and see how many there are.

 

Again, I'm not saying there's no problem with the number of houses being built, but pretending it's all down to those greedy capitalists is rather ignoring the wider issues.

[observer]

Oh, but it is "down to greedy capitalists" Asp: their sole motivation being to maximise profit, rather than affordable house building. The  solution to the "crisis" has been  tried and tested, it worked in 1945, and will work now, provided we have the political will.

[Confused52]

The LGA said 475k plots in 2016 which is only 12 quarters of production over recent years. Since the complaint is about big builders they usually have sites which take that long to build or more, look at Chapelford or the New Town builds using large builders at Callands. These businesses would build more if that would improve their profit but you can't run a business at maximum speed and then run out of land and make everyone redundant again. Nothing works like that since North Sea Gas conversion!

[fugtifino]

<sigh​>

 

Again, I'm not cherry picking, that's the most used, comprehensive job search site in the country. One of the issues with it is that one vacancy may appear multiple times placed by different job agencies.

 

A UK wide search for bricklayers gives 8 pages of results, or around 200.

 

A UK wide search for customer service gives 40 pages of results, or around 1,000.

 

Which has the greater demand?

 

Can you come up with a recent example of a development which didn't go ahead because of a shortage of skilled workers?

 

If there is a national shortage of hundreds of brickies which needs addressing urgently, then perhaps the building companies should be offering more apprenticeships, there are currently only around 50 on the National Apprenticeship website:

 

http://bit.ly/2lW0xTJ

[Confused52]

Take a look at page 20 of this report http://www.hbf.co.uk/?eID=dam_frontend_push&docID=25321&filename=Skyblue_Homebuilders_Report_2016_-_Long_01.pdf

 

Two quotes from the report which suggest that there is a problem and it is not just brickies. Wanting evidence from job adverts is ridiculous. No one site will be identifiable as not going ahead because of shortages but they will happen but be just a statistic, part of the 475,000. The report is for the House Builders Federation, an association whose members include the likes of Barratt, Bellway, Bloor, Bovis and Persimmon.

 

"Most homebuilders see the critical challenge as being about ‘capacity’ rather than ‘capability’. Their key concern for the future is being able to secure a sufficient volume of subcontractors and operatives to build more homes they wish to build; something that becomes more acute and competitive at half year and year end cycles in the industry where wage inflation, poaching and "stealing labour from one site to another" is reported as rife."

 

"Pinch points are being found within specific trades. Groundworkers, plumbers and electricians, bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, roofers and painters were all mentioned. Tactics to overcome this vary from the increased use of labour agencies to a trend for some larger homebuilders to increase the number of trades they directly employ. The preferred option would be for more subcontractors to take on direct employees, but risk aversion and the fluid nature of needing to bring people in and pull people off developments on a site by site basis is reported as being the main barrier."

 

I suggest that is evidence from the horse's mouth so the discussion can move on.

[Confused52]

Less than 12 months; plenty of time to provide the required skills base and the re-introduction of Local Authority Direct Works Dept; to carry out the building programme, could by-pass the reluctant private sector. Add to this legislation to take back land banks into public ownership at there original price, and we can get the show on the road.

 

Please tell me you were kidding. What you describe is a recipe for price inflation, just the opposite of what you are intending to happen. Local Authorities are looking for profit on capital these days, all the time, and they borrow that capital at our expense (reduced services) until the houses or whatever is sold. They are not knights in shining armour!

 

Direct Works departments went into decline because such work is not compatible with local government accounting which says add a percentage to what we spent last year and that is what we want to charge this year.

 

The council already asks builders for affordable houses as justified by their assessment of local housing needs in order to get planning permission. Then they have to pay more for section 106 agreements to pay for the road schemes the council want, even though they are miles away from the building site. The commercial homebuyers then pick up the tab, as the generally better quality specification small homes get sold off as affordable housing, at lower prices per square foot. Those are some of the reasons for price bloat. If getting planning permission was easy the council would have to spend our capital on building our roads instead of the Matalan site and that would give them no lease income. They have been behaving like a bank for ages now.

[observer]

If you think that "Councils" would be able to afford this, your obviously operating in a parallel universe; the money would be provided by CENTRAL Government, assuming of course we had one with the motivation to solve the "crisis".  If you believe, that to-date, "affordable" housing is being built, again, your on another planet.  Affordability, is a term oft used in planning, but seldom matches the reality; which is, that the large majority of demand comes from folk who clearly haven't the means to support a mortgage and are thus destined for the rented sector. Problem is, because demand is high, the rented sector prices have inflated, beyond "affordability"; so we need more "cheap" rented housing, to reduce demand and thus reduce prices. We've been here before in 1945, it was sorted then, and it can be sorted now. Simple: build more Council housing, including pre-fabs, lots of them and with subsidised rents, providing homes for the homeless and reducing demand, thus reducing price inflation throughout the housing market..

[Confused52]

Observer,

 

Affordable Housing is being built by developers and it is not a just a meaningless use of the word affordable. It means below market rate for the area, and for those sold to hosing associations that they will yield rents not above 80% of local market rent. What you call for would empty those already built to fill the cheap ones you want. I see your attachment to the ethos of the public sector causes you not to consider what happens in the real world.

 

I did not suggest that councils currently can afford to build houses with their own investment, rather that they simply increase the cost for commercial developers at the moment. 

 

I know I will regret it but where do you think the money comes from for the rent subsidies that you propose. Please give an answer that is not bleeding the so called rich until they need your version of affordable housing, since that is just the parallel universe  of communism.