By Democrat reporter
Scottish Labour has warned that skills shortages are contributing to the housing emergency as the number of construction workers and apprentices falls.
Last May the Scottish Government declared a housing emergency in West Dunbartonshire, and recent figures show rising levels of homelessness and record numbers of children in temporary accommodation.
Scottish Labour has warned that skills shortages risk worsening this crisis by limiting the number of new houses that can be built.
The number of people working in construction has fallen for two consecutive years, dropping by almost 3,500 between 2023 and 2024 alone.
Since 2019, Scotland has lost almost 12,000 construction workers – the equivalent to roughly 1 in every 13 jobs.
A shortage of workers is one of the key risks threatening the Scottish Government’s affordable housing targets, along with the SNP’s cuts to the affordable housing budget and failure to deliver planning reform.
The Scottish Government’s Risk Register for the Affordable Housing Supply Programme – a document which monitors threats to major projects like this – flagged skills shortages as a potential risk.
The register warned that “if there are insufficient skilled construction workers … this could result in delays to the delivery of affordable homes and reduce likelihood of meeting the target”.
This is considered medium risk, meaning it is “fairly likely to occur”, and confidence in the controls in place is marked as “limited”.
However, despite the clear need to train construction workers to help tackling the housing emergency, the number of Modern Apprentices in the construction sector is falling.
The number of Modern Apprentice starts in construction fell by 213 between 2022/23 and 2023/24, and quarterly data for 2024/25 suggests this downward trend is on track to continue for another year.
Scottish Labour Economy spokesperson Daniel Johnson, left, said “Under the SNP a housing emergency has taken hold in Scotland, but we don’t have the workforce to fix it.
“A lack of housing is causing misery across the board – driving up house prices and rent costs, and leaving record numbers of Scots stuck in temporary accommodation.
“To deal with this crisis we need to build more houses and we need to have the skilled workers to do it – but once again our skills system is failing to meet the needs of our country.
“We need to overhaul Scotland’s dysfunctional skills system so it provides people with the right opportunities and supports our wider social and economic goals.”
Skills shortage they say.
Surely not, as Ricky Fulton would have said back in the day. Only last week Labour was saying how Scotland could be the world leader in IT were it not for the IT skills shortage.
And today the clarion call is that a construction skills shortage is curtailing the ability to build enough houses to eradicate the lack of houses.
And then of course there is the shortage of doctors and nurses. Again we don’t have enough of them either. But how can this be? How have we become a nation that can’t train enough people to meet our needs? It’s absolutely wild. Truly wild. And remember we don’t now build ships, make steel, manufacture cars. And in relation to our burgeoning renewable wind generation all of the huge offshore jackets, the turbines, the blades are all made abroad.
So why is it like this? Are we a world superpower educated and able as the politicos would tell us, or are we a poorly trained and educated country sliding down the economic world rankings. Its a good question as our social services struggle, our NHS struggles, as our export trade struggles.
We are after all in our post Brexit Golden Age with our best years ahead of us. Or is that just absolute the spin of a country in decline.
Maybe its time we had a good hard look at ourselves and ask the hard questions because to now say that on top of the other things that we can’t do we can’t build enough houses either because of skill shortages then there’s something far wrong.