A skills gap that continues to widen…

The 2025 Glazing Summit, which is being hosted tomorrow at the Coventry Arena, has a number of new topics on the agenda including a keynote on the Building Safety Regulator and a panel discussion on AI, as well as some ‘firm favourites’ – such as how to encourage new talent into the industry.

The skills gap was a major talking point when I joined the industry, which is a fair few years ago now, and continues to be to this day.

So what has been done in that time to try and help close it? We have seen numerous positive initiatives from the likes of Building Our Skills and the GGF’s Skilled Pathways scheme, as well as lots of success stories from larger organisations that have the resources to manage and train apprentices.

Often, these have demonstrated that investing in young, talented and enthusiastic people can reap huge rewards, with many progressing into senior roles and even serving as a role models for other new starters.

But while these are an inspiration, the truth is that there’s not enough of them. That’s reflected in a recent report from Screwfix that the UK will be short of 250,000 tradespeople by 2030. This is based on an estimate of one in four tradespeople planning to retire in the next five years and a shortfall of replacements.

This includes all trades, from plumbers to carpenters, and highlights the problem, particularly with sole traders, of managing the responsibility and paperwork of taking on an apprentice and helps to explain why more than £3.3 billion of unused apprenticeship levy has been returned to the Treasury, figures that were revealed by a freedom of information request in 2022.

In contrast, young people are still being encouraged to go to University, take on large amounts of debt and potentially for a degree that isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

A recent report has shown that tens of thousands of students, typically with media and arts degrees, struggle to earn minimum wage a year after graduating and the bottom quartile of graduate earners from nearly 100 UK universities were not earning the equivalent of working 40 hours a week on minimum wage.

How do we make the glazing industry more attractive to young people? All the while that university is regarded as a lifestyle choice, rather than a route to a well-paid job, it will continue to be a huge challenge.