The government’s £283 million investment to train the next generation of builders, coders and engineers has been met with a sceptical response from business leaders, who have warned that the funding is “too little, too late” to address the UK’s mounting economic and housing challenges.
Ministers say the funding will help more young people gain the skills needed to meet growing demand for homegrown workers, particularly in construction, as the government pushes ahead with its ambition to build 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current Parliament.
Around £100 million of the package will be channelled to metro mayors and local leaders to expand capacity in construction courses at further education colleges, easing long waiting lists and supporting a target of training an additional 60,000 construction workers. The remainder of the funding will give local leaders greater flexibility to boost college capacity more broadly, ahead of an expected influx of 67,000 extra 16- and 17-year-olds entering post-16 education by 2028.
However, critics argue that the investment fails to address the immediacy of the UK’s skills shortages and overlooks deeper structural issues in the economy.
Michelle Lawson, director of Fareham-based Lawson Financial, described the announcement as “more hot air from the ‘too little too late’ party”.
“The problems we have are now, not in 2028 or 2030,” she said. “There has been too much focus on being world-beating in everything except developing homegrown talent in our own children. Apprenticeships are rare, employers are under huge cost pressure and are often too stretched to train young people.
“Schemes such as the old YTS across all trades should be paramount to get our children into the workplace. The economy is on a knife-edge, there is no time to wait.”
Others questioned whether skills shortages are really the root cause of the UK’s economic and housing woes. Rohit Parmar-Mistry, founder of Burton-on-Trent-based data firm Pattrn Data, said the policy risks misdiagnosing the problem.
“This announcement assumes the barrier to a better economy is a lack of skilled workers. It isn’t,” he said. “It’s a lack of incentive for companies to actually build. Blaming the housing crisis on a lack of workers is a convenient fiction.
“The real bottleneck isn’t labour; it’s land-banking. Major developers have hoarded land with planning permission for years to constrain supply. Flooding the market would hit prices and profits, so they control the tap. You can train an army of workers, but if the incentives reward scarcity, those workers will sit idle.”
Concerns were also raised about whether construction remains an attractive career choice for young people. Kundan Bhaduri, entrepreneur and landlord at London-based The Kushman Group, questioned the realism of the government’s targets.
“Promising 60,000 additional construction workers to deliver 1.5 million homes sounds impressive until you realise that’s roughly 40 workers per thousand homes in a sector already losing talent to early retirement and regulatory fatigue,” he said.
“The real question isn’t whether colleges can expand, but whether young people will choose construction in an economy that treats housebuilders and landlords like pariahs. Who is going to employ these newly trained workers if there’s no profit in building millions of homes?”
Some experts warned that competition from other sectors could further undermine the policy. Colette Mason, author and AI consultant at Clever Clogs AI, said the rapid expansion of digital infrastructure is already pulling skilled workers away from housing.
“Data centres are hoovering up construction workers faster than we can train them, and they pay better,” she said. “We’ve got £36 billion worth of data centre projects competing for the same electricians and site managers needed to build homes.
“When installing AI infrastructure pays more and avoids glacial planning delays, where do you think talent will go?”
There were also calls for better coordination across government. Kate Underwood, founder of Kate Underwood HR and Training, said the lack of joined-up thinking risks diluting the impact of the funding.
“We’ve had different departments throwing money at basically the same problem, and it still feels like nobody’s sharing a plan,” she said. “It only works if jobcentres, colleges and local employers actually talk to each other and align courses with real vacancies.
“If it’s more silos, different rules and more forms, we’ll still be fighting over the same tiny pool of talent.”
While ministers argue the investment is a vital step towards future-proofing the workforce, critics say without urgent reform to incentives, planning and employer support, the £283 million package risks arriving long after the damage has already been done.
