The Building Engineering Services Association (BESA) has urged the government to make vital provision to avert potential workforce shortages in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit next month.
It backed recommendations made by the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) to review the rules governing the 165,000 EU citizens currently employed by the construction industry to ensure valuable skills are not lost to the UK economy.
It said the required qualification level for a skilled worker should be reduced to NVQ Level 2 and the salary threshold for a skilled worker be set well below the £30,000 currently planned by the government.
“There is a fundamental misunderstanding in Whitehall about what constitutes a skilled worker in construction-related trades,” said director of BESA Training Tony Howard. “Many of the people labelled as ‘low skilled’ by the Prime Minister recently actually bring essential craft skills to our critical construction and infrastructure projects.
“At the moment, government Brexit policy risks excluding Level 2 tradespeople like plumbers, bricklayers and carpenters. Losing thousands of those could be catastrophic and put the delivery of many UK projects at risk.”