Walk onto any construction site in Britain today. Look around.
One-third of the workers you see will be gone by 2035.
The industry faces over 35,000 job vacancies right now. More than half can’t be filled because the skills don’t exist. Training has collapsed from 57% of firms in 2011 to just 49% today.
The government’s answer? A college in Wigan.
The government has designated Wigan and Leigh College as one of ten construction technical excellence colleges across England. The college becomes the North West’s regional hub for elite construction training, part of a £100 million investment aimed at training over 40,000 construction professionals.
The timing reveals the desperation.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson positioned this initiative as essential for delivering economic growth through the government’s “Plan for Change.” The announcement strategically coincided with A-level results week, highlighting alternative career pathways when traditional university routes dominate headlines.
The scale mismatch is obvious.
The Construction Skills Mission Board has committed to recruiting an additional 100,000 construction workers annually by the end of this parliament. Yet the demographic cliff approaches: 35% of current workers are over 50, while only 20% are under 30.
The industry loses more workers than it gains each year.
Here’s what the numbers actually mean. This £100 million program forms part of a £625 million commitment to train 60,000 skilled construction workers by 2029. The government aims to build 1.5 million new homes while reducing dependence on foreign workers.
Wigan and Leigh College already invested over £5 million in construction facilities by 2024, before taking on this expanded role. The college will train builders, bricklayers, electricians, carpenters, and plumbers through specialized regional programs.
Can ten colleges fix a national crisis?
The construction industry welcomed 200,000 new workers in 2023 but lost 210,000. The workforce has shrunk by 347,000 people since 2019, with self-employment falling by 21.9%. The UK will need nearly one million additional construction workers by 2032.
Training 40,000 people sounds impressive until you realize we need nearly one million additional workers by 2032. The math is simple: it’s not enough.
The Wigan approach works if scaled up. Regional hubs of technical excellence address the training gap left by declining industry provision. They create pathways for young people while building domestic capacity to reduce foreign worker dependence.
Yet success depends on execution at unprecedented scale.
The construction sector remains one of the least diverse industries, with women representing just 0.9% of housebuilders. This shrinks the talent pool when we need it most. Right now, 159,000 children sleep in temporary housing while we struggle to find people to build their permanent homes.
The Wigan experiment reveals the government’s real strategy. Instead of fixing the industry’s training collapse, they’re outsourcing the solution to ten colleges.
Ten colleges. One million missing workers. You do the math.