In a workshop in Croydon, asylum seekers learn to lay bricks, install roofing, and frame walls.
Viviene Bish Bedeau’s organization, CEO (Construction and Engineering Opportunities), provides construction training to people who can’t legally work—yet. Most have been waiting over a year for permission to earn a wage while the UK construction industry hemorrhages workers.
The training program works. The policy framework doesn’t.
The 12-Month Trap
Asylum seekers in the UK wait 12 months before they can apply for permission to work. If granted, they’re restricted to jobs on the Immigration Salary List.
Construction trades qualify—bricklayers, roofers, plasterers, carpenters.
As of March 2024, 21,100 asylum cases had been waiting 12 months or longer. That’s 21,100 people with no legal pathway to earn money or build skills.
Canada allows asylum seekers to work immediately. The USA allows it after six months. The EU is reducing its waiting period from nine months to six by June 2026.
The UK maintains the 12-month restriction, claiming it prevents a “pull factor”—that faster work access would attract economic migrants. Yet countries with shorter waiting periods don’t see higher asylum applications per capita than the UK. In 2022, 15,700 people were granted permission to work. How many secured employment remains unknown.
The Construction Crisis No One Connects
The UK construction industry needs 251,500 additional workers by 2028 to meet demand. Despite recruiting 200,000 people annually, the industry lost 210,000 workers in 2023.
The math doesn’t work.
For 31% of construction employers, finding skilled staff is the primary challenge. The government plans to build 1.5 million houses and has committed £8.3 billion to Great British Energy projects.
None of this happens without workers.
Refugees who sought asylum are three times more likely to be unemployed than people born in the UK. Only 51% find employment, compared to 73% for UK-born individuals.
The motivation exists. The pathway doesn’t.
How Construction Training Works
Take a typical participant: a qualified engineer from Syria who spent 18 months in Home Office accommodation, prohibited from working, watching his skills deteriorate.
After finally receiving permission to work, he found the CEO. Within six months, he had his CSCS card and a job with a construction firm in South London.
His story is the exception that proves the rule: most asylum seekers never get that chance.
The Training Model
CEO’s RAISE program (Refugees and Asylum Seekers Integration and Empowerment) provides construction training leading to Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) cards.
Participants learn by doing, which overcomes language barriers.
The workshop is both a training facility and a social hub. CEO sustains itself through a mix of grant funding, corporate partnerships, and contracts for supervised construction projects that employ program graduates.
Participants gain immediate employment through supervised paid work. Vocational training graduates secure jobs within the first year—faster than university graduates.
University education costs £28,600 in tuition over three years, plus tens of thousands in maintenance loans and living costs. Construction vocational training typically costs under £10,000.
Few students consider careers in construction, despite the skills shortage. The perception gap is massive.
What Construction Training Exposes
CEO’s success highlights policy failures—but also reveals deeper structural problems in how Britain trains workers and values construction trades.
A 2024 report found that processing asylum applications within six months, providing employment support, and offering free English classes from arrival would generate £1.2 billion for the UK economy within five years.
Instead, community interest companies fill gaps with uncertain funding.
The program exposes the construction industry’s image problem. Over 35% of construction workers are over 50. Only 20% are under 30. Few parents would recommend construction careers to their children.
Perceptions that construction is “low-paid, dirty, and for people with poor academic skills” keep young people away. Female leadership in construction training and diverse programming challenge these stereotypes.
What Construction Training Teaches About Policy
CEO’s relocation to Croydon’s Whitgift Centre signals expansion.
The lesson isn’t about replicating construction training programs. It’s about why policy forces them to exist.
When policy prevents a connection between demand and labor, alternative pathways emerge. These pathways work around restrictions rather than removing them.
The construction industry’s aging workforce creates a succession crisis. The push toward university education undervalues construction vocational training. Asylum seeker work restrictions create barriers to economic participation.
CEO addresses symptoms. Policy creates the disease.
Asylum seekers want to work and fill critical labor shortages in construction when given access to training.
The question isn’t whether construction training programs like CEO should exist. It’s why policy makes them necessary.