At South and City College in Birmingham, dozens of young people clad in hi-vis vests and hard hats are building mini-walls and plastering half-formed rooms.<\/p>\n
Some weave in and out of stacks of bricks with wheelbarrows, while others use spirit levels to check the walls are straight and flat. In a few days time, these walls will be demolished and the plastering scraped away, for a new class to come in and try their hands.<\/p>\n
This is the new generation of Britain\u2019s construction workers, eager to rise to the task of building the 1.5m new homes<\/a> the government has repeatedly proclaimed will solve the country\u2019s housing crisis.<\/p>\n But despite ploughing ahead with extensive planning reform<\/a>, cutting affordable housing targets<\/a> and accessibility requirements<\/a> in the name of a \u201cBuild Baby Build\u201d philosophy, many in the sector think reaching the 1.5m target is impossible.<\/p>\n Just over 300,000 homes were added to the housing stock in the first 18 months of the new parliament, according to government estimates \u2013 nearly a third short of the pace needed to meet the manifesto target.<\/p>\n So what is happening with housebuilding in the UK, and will the government reach its goal by the end of this parliament?<\/p>\n Labour shortages<\/p>\n For years, experts have been ringing alarm bells about a growing skills crisis in the construction industry \u2013 there were 140,000 job vacancies stalling essential housing and infrastructure projects in 2025, according to Places for People, and it is forecast a third of construction workers will retire by 2035.<\/p>\n Staff at South and City College say the problem isn\u2019t a skills crisis but an opportunities crisis. Their courses \u2013 from brickwork and plumbing, to electrical and carpentry \u2013 are busier than ever. They\u2019re expanding their Longbridge campus to accommodate the rising demand, increasing class sizes and putting on extra cohorts.<\/p>\n Students practising building walls at South and City College in Birmingham. The college offers courses in the construction industry. Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n More than 62,500 adults enrolled to study for a qualification in construction in England<\/a> last academic year, according to the Department for Education data. It was the fastest-growing field of study in adult education, with enrolments up by nearly a third since 2021.<\/p>\n chart <\/a><\/p>\n Informal training that does not result in regulated qualification also more than doubled from just over 10,200 students to 23,500 last year.<\/p>\n Awad, 19, said he had to be on a waiting list before he was able to get on the college\u2019s plumbing course \u2013 something he was personally interested in, but also felt would provide a steady line of work with the government\u2019s housebuilding ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means we know we\u2019re going to be supplied with work, to help build all these houses. It feels like there\u2019s a lot of opportunity,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always going to be a lot of demand. If we make more homes, then obviously that means more jobs for us lot. And we get to help improve society.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t finding the young people who want to work in the sector, but helping them find their way into the industry, staff say. There is a woeful lack of apprenticeships, and without two years of hands-on experience, young people struggle to find an employer willing to take them on.<\/p>\n Last year, only 24,500 people started an apprenticeship in construction in England. That is a fifth more than in 2020\/2021 academic year \u2013 equivalent to 4,000 more people.<\/p>\n Andy Thompson, faculty head (centre) with Becky Waterfield, and a staff member at South and City College. They don\u2019t agree that there\u2019s a skills shortage in the construction sector. Photograph: Andrew Fox\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cWe could fill most of our eight campuses with the demand in construction alone,\u201d said Rebecca Waterfield, executive director of business development at the college. \u201cWhat frustrates us is that I only had three brick apprentices start this year. So if there is such a big skill shortage, we\u2019ve got the young people, but we need to work in collaboration with industry to make sure they\u2019re going into those jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cEmployers are being quite shortsighted; they\u2019re not taking on young people in apprenticeship roles or trainee roles, because of costs, because of time, because of quite a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n The government has promised to train 40,000 new builders, bricklayers, electricians, carpenters and plumbers to help \u201cturbocharge\u201d building rates and help the working classes.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re going to hit that easily. That\u2019s the easy part. It\u2019s about how many of that 40,000 actually end up in a job in the construction industry,\u201d said faculty head, Andy Thompson.<\/p>\n Waterfield added: \u201cIt\u2019s not a skills shortage. It\u2019s a connectivity issue. If every construction employer in Birmingham took one student on for experience, they would have their next workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cWe get that it\u2019s economically challenging. We\u2019re not having a knock. But what we\u2019re saying is, please stop telling us there\u2019s a skills shortage.\u201d<\/p>\n Cost of materials<\/p>\n At Emerys builders merchants in Stoke-on-Trent, workers are busy organising and stacking materials but there aren\u2019t many customers around. It\u2019s suspiciously quiet as a forklift trundles past with its load, and two workers pick up large boards of insulation.<\/p>\n \u201cJust this morning we\u2019ve had suppliers closing order books on those because of rising fuel costs,\u201d said managing director James Hipkins, as he pointed to the boards. \u201cThat\u2019s going to hold up housebuilding because companies just can\u2019t get what they need.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re starting to get product shortages, problems with supply. A lot of stuff comes from the far east, things like plywoods and timbers and imported stone. Everything is just rocketing in cost because of the Middle East crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n But even before war broke out in the Middle East, things weren\u2019t looking good for companies like Emery\u2019s.<\/p>\n chart<\/a>chart<\/a><\/p>\n UK-produced brick prices are 80% up compared to a decade ago, ONS data shows. The cost of insulating materials, metal screws and precast concrete rose by about 50% in four years since 2021, while raw materials prices such as sand, gravel and cement as well as paint increased by about 30%.<\/p>\n Along with geopolitical instability and shipping disruption, rising energy costs and the need for more advanced low-carbon materials to meet green standards has driven up costs.<\/p>\n The result is that housebuilders can\u2019t afford to buy as much. \u201cWe\u2019re way adrift of those housebuilding targets and we can\u2019t see how it\u2019s going to get better,\u201d said John Newcomb, CEO of the Builders Merchants Federation. \u201cWe will probably see somewhere between a 5% to 10% price increase in materials as a direct result of the Middle East situation.\u201d<\/p>\n James Hipkins, managing director of Emery\u2019s Builders Merchants in Stoke-on-Trent, says his firm has posted an annual loss for the first time in 40 years. Photograph: Fabio De Paola\/The Guardian<\/p>\n He said the sector was \u201cfull of hope and expectation\u201d when the Labour party came to power and pledged 1.5m new homes. \u201cA lot of our manufacturers clearly geared up and have invested quite heavily, but the upturn hasn\u2019t happened,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n By their analysis, across the sector, \u00a31.4bn was invested by manufacturers and merchants to increase capacity in the materials supply chain in anticipation of a housebuilding boom which has yet to materialise \u2013 in the last year, 24 BMF members have gone into insolvency, and five more into administration.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to be the first time in 40 years we\u2019ve posted an annual loss,\u201d said Hipkins, Midlands Regional chair for the BMF. \u201cThis is much worse than after the 2008 financial crisis, because it\u2019s insidious and it\u2019s going undetected, unmentioned, unnoticed. We\u2019re in a major cost of doing business crisis and no one seems to care.\u201d<\/p>\n Affordability<\/p>\n At Woodberry Down in north London, diggers are in the process of demolishing a block of flats, phase four of a regeneration project to replace 2,000 homes \u2013 mostly council housing \u2013 with nearly 6,000 new ones that has already taken 15 years, and won\u2019t be finished until 2035.<\/p>\n Berkeley Homes, the developer in charge, builds 10% of London\u2019s homes. It is at the frontline of what has been described as a total collapse of housebuilding in the capital \u2013 only 3,248 new private homes began construction in London in the first nine months of 2025, less than 5% of the government\u2019s forthcoming target of 88,000 per year.<\/p>\n \u201cEconomically, housebuilding is in a worse position than we were in 2010 after the financial crash,\u201d said Rob Perrins, executive chair of Berkeley Group. \u201cIn the last 10 years, our costs are up 50%, but sales prices [of flats] haven\u2019t risen at anywhere near the same rate, and that\u2019s for a myriad of reasons. We\u2019ve had the Ukraine disruption, the oil price increases \u2013 that\u2019s caused huge issues in terms of viability.\u201d<\/p>\n Steve Reed, the housing secretary, cut affordable housing targets in London to 20% from 35% last year in a bid to boost building rates. Photograph: Yui Mok\/PA<\/p>\n Earlier this month, Berkeley Group announced it would stop buying new land and hiring new staff<\/a> due to the impact of \u201cgeopolitical volatility\u201d, weak demand from buyers and \u201cunprecedented\u201d increases in costs and regulation.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t bode well for housebuilding generally, but particularly not for affordable housing, which has stagnated across England in recent years. In an effort to boost building rates, the housing secretary, Steve Reed, cut affordable housing targets in London to 20% from 35% last year<\/a>, prompting anger among homelessness campaigners and MPs.<\/p>\n Perrins insists it was the right thing to do: \u201cIf you kept to a 35% affordable housing fast track, no one was putting applications in. So do you want 20% of something, or 35% of nothing?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But there are concerns about who will be able to afford to buy whatever is built. Perrins said consumer hesitancy was the worst he had ever seen \u2013 now, one in three people who reserve one of their properties ends up cancelling, up from 15% a year ago.<\/p>\n \u201cThat shows how uncertain everyone is \u2013 there is a cost of living crisis, there is job losses. People aren\u2019t buying,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s first, can you make the site viable? And then, is the demand actually there?<\/p>\n \u201cThe numbers speak for themselves, people just aren\u2019t investing. It\u2019s affected everyone in building \u2013 local authorities and housing associations too. It\u2019s not a private housebuilder issue. It\u2019s a total market issue.\u201d<\/p>\n On Woodberry Down, 43% of the new properties will be classed as affordable, including social rent and shared ownership.<\/p>\n Justin Tibaldi, managing director of Berkeley Capital (left), with Rob Perrins, chief executive of Berkeley Group, at Woodberry Down in north London. Photograph: Teri Pengilley\/The Guardian<\/p>\n But local residents said there are not enough social homes being built, and affordability is marred by service charges. Private developers provide the majority of new social housing, accounting for 83% of the total increase in affordable rent and 98% for low-cost home ownership properties.<\/p>\n Less than one in five homes in England are classed as affordable, according to government data. And social rent increased by 8% in the first financial year Labour was in power, from \u00a3471 to \u00a3510 per month with private providers and from \u00a3425 to \u00a3460 with local authority providers.<\/p>\n Cash-strapped local authorities have little capacity to boost their stock, too \u2013 almost 7,000 social rent homes were sold to right to buy and other schemes in the same period.<\/p>\n Experts say the country\u2019s increasing reliance on a few large housebuilders to create most of its new housing stock \u2013 in England, about 40% of all new homes were built by the 11 largest<\/a> developers in 2022 \u2013 is a fundamental issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re private companies, they\u2019re expected to make a profit,\u201d said Dr Jonathan Webb, principal research fellow at the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government are going to struggle to meet that 1.5m target and also make those homes affordable because there\u2019s a fundamental misalignment in terms of what the government want to do and the interests of the people they\u2019re ultimately reliant on to build those homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Planning reform<\/p>\n