The construction industry is one of the largest employers in the UK with an estimated 3 million workers and it is still growing. The Construction Industry Training Board, CITB, estimates that in order to meet current demand the industry will need to recruit a further quarter of a million workers by 2019. 

With numbers that large it is still surprising for many that women in construction still only make up 1% of site staff and 11% of workers in the industry overall. Thanks to the work of a number of groups it is hoped that, and we really need to stress the “hope” part of that, that by 2020 women will make up a quarter of the workforce, but let’s be honest it still isn’t enough. 

The collapse of Carillion has been reported as the decline of one of the big beasts of construction. What has been missed from the headlines though is what it means for the smaller companies reliant on contracts which such firms. 

The Chancellor’s 2017 budget was pretty much what was expected at this time, fiscally conservative with a focus on house building . 

Further investment of £15.3 billion to facilitate the building of 300,000 new homes over the next five years, bringing the allocated budget to £44 billion is a good start.