I'd love to see a proper analysis of how we're going to find the people to build the third runway at Heathrow, several new reservoirs, 1.5 million houses and various other new infrastructure without mass imigration.
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I think this is a fair question. Construction labour is tighter now than at any point in the recent past. But it must be remembered that the UK has managed delivery of multiple mega-projects at the same time in the past. And plans announced won’t all be built at the same time
We must also look at the other end of the funnel. By the time these projects get on site, huge amounts of resources will be released from projects like HS2, Hinkley Point and the highways programme as it scales back. Overall, I think it is a real issue, but one that can be met with sensible planning
Perhaps she can be the first female pilot to take off from the third run way, good luck to her. My daughter has trained for ten years to be a surgeon and can't get a job because 80% of new surgeons are immigrants. We are depriving other countries of their doctors, lets support our own children.
Absolutely, if you don't believe me read the doctors forums on Reddit, I've included an example below please read it and study the chart comparing the increase those applicants from abroad.
Maybe, but there are millions doing gig economy jobs who may want to be involved in large civil engineering projects. Let's train them up. Lets give them more opportunities, not leave young people in a race to the bottom.
I don’t disagree with the idea, but already lots of opportunities and shortages in CE. It’s a big assumption that gig economy workers have any desire for that kind of work. Same as hospitality really. Why does someone want to deliver takeaway rather than work in hospitality or construction already?
Young people are being forced into the gig economy we need to provide alternatives and train or re-skill our young, provide opportunities and hope. I'm not against immigration but let's look after our young people first. I can't believe our young prefer delivering take aways to civil engineering.
We need the training and re-skilling for sure. I’m sure most gig workers would like a better job with decent t&c. I’m still not convinced that job is outdoors, long hours, physically demanding work TBH. This is just my opinion after years working in FE with young people.
Easy! Get all us wheelchair bound, long Covid suffers and people with mental health illness shirkers off benefits and straight on the building sites. I mean we are robbing the country blind of it’s taxes…
I'd like to see a proper analysis of the herd mentality of a group of journalists (I use the term loosely) who seem determined to undermine a government who have inherited a truly dreadful situation. Thank you.
I'd like to see a proper analysis of the herd mentality of Labour Party members who continue to insist that Brexit can be made to work and that saying otherwise is negative thinking.
Unlike Blair in 1997, Starmer has arrived with no clear plan for government despite knowing it was bad before the election. Reeves is making big mistakes in the Treasury. The Brexit red lines are the product of political cowardice not what the country needs. But you think criticism is unjustified?
If all the pundits making political podcasts and posting furiously online all day were usefully retrained in the construction sector, we'd have more than enough people.
It will take forty years. 5 years for surveying. 5 years for planning permission. 5 years for detailed design. 5 years to secure funding. 15 years to build. 5 years to commission, integrate test.
Don't we just need young people to avoid avocado toast and cancel Netflix? That seems to be the usual solution to apparently insurmountable difficulties.
If it requires some immigration, not necessarily 'mass immigration' (however we define that (?)) then we should do it. Perhaps a special programme open to the EU - temporary FoM - to allow people to come and work specifically on these projects. Something akin to the US H1B visa might work.
Of course we should also be encouraging incentivised skills re/training to get British workers onto these projects too. There must be roles on these programmes for at least some of the out of work population, given the right opportunities for training.
So... They're not going to, then. Aren't we all used to this government saying they are for something, then a while later saying the exact opposite. Normally, there's a change in government to get that, or at least a change in leadership. Labour are just stepping over the boring bits.
Also - what workers? They are saying Planning Permission will take until 2029 at the earliest?!
That part is nuts. Support the project or not, feasible economically or not, the Planning Permission shouldn't take 4 years to get to a Yes or No.
and people who work in think tanks, newspaper columnists, influencers, football pundits and people who work in other superfluous jobs. #BuildForBritain
Big fan of getting think tank workers building us a few new reservoirs. They’ve done enough damage to our country, they should be helping build it back up. Football pundits too, half of them are so bad at their own job surely they can’t be any worse at manual labour?
Some will come from the unemployed being offered "work experience and training" that don't offer accepted qualifications or a route into permanent work, on threats of losing benefits. Others may come from a new fast track visa scheme. Maybe we could use prison labour too.
It's about the same level of analysis they've given to the 'Cambridge-Oxford Arc' announcement - no provision for the water, electricity, housing, amenities, education and other services required, all of which are already in short supply throughout the region.
I suppose one way would be to increase wages for the trades required to build. Economists call this simply supply & demand economics but for some strange reason we in the UK prefer to minimise wages for the old traditional working class construction trades & import cheap labour.
There are factories out there building housing, presumably more productive. Our current system seems to mean they can't survive, but maybe we'll see a more productive construction sector if easier to build things?
If you never start you’ll never achieve it. That’s the point she’s making. Could be a million people sat waiting to work that we never created opportunities for. Assumption always it’ll be ‘immigrants’! Why not take a day off and view the announcements as positive
So the announcements aren’t positive? And if not, then is it not because it’ll drive immigration? You weren’t asking a question, you were making a statement that to do this will require immigrants. Have you asked the government for the details on how it can be delivered?
Do we need more or less than the 3/4 million net migration last year? Because if it can be done with less then it's still compatible with reducing net migration, which is what she said.
That was the case last year, but it's not going to be the case every year. Healthcare worker visas had already fallen by 80% in Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2023.
I don’t know whether its feasible but my mind turns to the prefabs post war. Factory built construction has come on hugely since then. Something needs to disrupt the stranglehold of the housebuilders and their frankly antiquated building methods.
We do have work visas available
That by itself isn't the problem
Immigration is necessary but those overstaying their visas is an issue.
Mostly these are students overstaying
The million was net *legal* migration, plus asylum seekers. It does not include visa overstays, which remain a negligible amount (ca. 100,000 a year, a lot of it accidental)
also (caveat for incomplete data) students have historically been the most compliant visa group among all categories in terms of not overstaying. I'm not aware of any recent data or report which says students had a big bump in unauthorised residency
The smallest bit of detail Reeves gave in that speech was about closer allignment with the EU and it's so frustrating as without it these huge infrastructure projects won't take off if you excuse the pun.
Maybe you could state that firms taking government infrastructure projects have to have a significant apprenticeship program which would help in the medium term?
The experience of my family members in the industry is that over the years the big building firms have not taken on apprentices as that eats into profits. It has to start somehow
The current line to take appears to be that the public have spoken: no more mass migration. I can only assume that the building projects are going to be built with fairy dust.
There's potential for some coordination of these activities. Get people an experience at X before they work on Y. Probably something on reusing excavated material. For T5, clearly EU workers played a big part. Hopefully lots of people available after New T1 at JFK complete.
Not forgetting there's still A LOT of HS2 still to complete. A civil engineer relative who works on the project from time to time told me 2 years ago "It's sucking in most of the country's civ eng resources", meaning both plant and people.
It's quite incredible that Labour have the kind of majority they do and are still running scared of receiving bad headlines. Just come out and be honest with people about things like immigration and get on with it.
Possibly conscription into the building trade (and agriculture?) of people not getting university places, people denied disability benefits and the elderly. Although who can say whether those people will actually be any use on a building site?
By which I'm not being snarky - but asking the question 'why not AI?' is quite instructive.
a) People that AI makes redundant (call centres & coders short term likely) may not deploy easily to construction (which has a lot of training these days).
b) Robotics, controlled AI that works in the real world, could potentially boost construction productivity - but is this plausible on a 5 year timescale?
I mean… obviously not. I can’t get AI to write my meeting minutes without screwing it up. Do you think we can trust it to run a project? Or a whole factory? The step change in technology required is immense. Then it would have to rolled out. It took a decade to use BIM properly.
It’s a hard pitch given the urgency, but if they want to sidestep the prickly immigration debate, they could always take the scenic route—maybe start by fixing the dropping birth rates or finally noticing the slow-motion car crash that is the university and further education sector.
Grateful to anyone who can point me in the direction of evidence that airport expansion as planned will lead to sustainable economic growth (beyond airline/airport/construction jobs directly connected to it).
Not a rhetorical question. I'm just not aware of where I can find it.
This is one of the (many) frustrations from environmentalists smashing their heads against the wall whenever she says that bats and newts are blockers to developments.
Green light all the developments you want, but if you haven't got the workers then nothings getting built
We're going to force the companies who get the contracts to pay British workers salaries commensurate with their skills, which will attract them to take on oh hang on that's the doorbell. Speedy John has arrived with another gram. BRB
The runway won’t start until 2030. The houses could do.
Still big labour shortages both for site workers and less so, but still there in supply chain and transport.
I’d like to see some analysis of how we are currently training people to work in construction. Traditionally, this would have been in FE colleges, but obviously that sector has been significantly reduced over time.
I'd like to see some European style prefab housing going up. Surely there is no better opportunity than now to move away from the way we have been building, mostly poorly, forever.
No, most new build garages are deliberately even only a few feet deep and intended for storage, which is both stupid (why does it need to look like a garage?) and wasteful (because of the way they're often grafted onto the house).
Don't forget harvesting fruit and veg and wiping granny's bum. Oh, and how to make the City a beacon of international finance again without allowing any foreigners in.
The 1.5 million houses are this parliament. Heathrow expansion will be closer to heat death of universe than to today. They can do the reservoirs and stuff in the middle.
The notion that governments can plan immigration based on the skills needs of businesses is for the birds, and the USSR, which failed even to achieve this with total control over their population.
No government can predict the future.
No government can retrospectively enact an immigration policy.
It's all in the detail. Heathrow won't be building for a decade or more. Reservoirs need different skilled workers to house builders.
Net migration is set to continue at around 300k / year. I'm sure there will be plenty of builders and civil engineers in that lot.
There's certainly a lot of people today pretending that any reduction *at all*, even a small one, in a net migration figure that tripled after 2020 from what was the normal average figures for previous decades will somehow prevent us from doing anything... 🤦♂️
I want to see how we’re going to build a third runway and all it’s infrastructure in a crowded area that will double the size of the airport and destroy homes, villages and wildlife and isn’t needed because all the more regional airports are already expanding
Lots and lots of immigrants because the last govt totally failed to invest in skills and construction companies didn't because they didn't have the work to justify the investment
Even if we had FoM, there wouldn't be enough from the EU as it's 25' not 04'. Polish, Romanians wouldn't come in the numbers they did be4, we'll need ppl from nonEU
Understand but good luck with that. Everyone knows migrant workers are significant to NHS, but see how toxic the debate will be once immigration is involved.
Given that we already have lots of Polish lorry drivers who come and work a few months, go home then come back again I envisage that being a partial solution. Good rep for hard work and reliability, available and not far away.
It’ll be done by the same companies that are doing the motorways & HS2 to make sure the job takes 30 years on maximum cost for the expenditure and they came keep moving the same people from one job to another dragging it out
We need immigration as I explained above otherwise the population plummets and we won't be able to pay any pensions. All those Reform voters will go hungry
It would be really handy if we had some sort of system of free movement between our closest allies so we had a more flexible labour market. Oh if only....
A country fully committed to bastardry would designate the site as extra-territorial, fly workers in without them having to pass through immigration or get any of those pesky rights.
The sort of country that prioritises building runways in the midst of a climate emergency, in other words.
The reason they won't do this, ofc, is that the border checkpoints where the M25 passes underneath it would cause considerable traffic delays, thereby greatly upsetting the voters of Uxbridge.
(On a more serious note. If the supply of workers is as tight as you say - surely that's one more strong argument for prioritising the building of things other than runways..)
Very true, after a lifetime in construction I now spend my retirement amazed at how long projects take, due largely to a lack of labour. Firms do a couple of days, then move the team to keep another client happy....then on and on
Surely if the msm are to be believed there are untold millions of migrants being put in luxury hotels, we could let them all out and and have a runway and a couple of housing estates finished by the middle of next week.
Successive Govts have never been honest about how immigration supports key sectors of the economy and also addresses issues around an aging population. The construction industry in particular has had to employ large numbers of immigrants because Brits often can't or won't do that type of work.
Finally! A proper Brexit benefit: a way we can productively spend the time we’re made to wait in queues to European destinations. Without it we’d never have had this glorious opportunity.
We need to build electric or hydrogen powered planes, but in the medium term, you are accepting my pollution for 4 and half hours travel from Birstall to Gatwick, or alternative london airport, even before I get onto a plane!
This is why the greens cannot get thevotes and support they deserve, bc you're stuck in an absolute mindset, without compromise, and many many people find the absolutism impractical!
We could always stop restricting the amount of tradespeople we train. Been an issue for decades that people who want to retrain can’t cos the courses are full.
Well we managed to build almost everything in this country without mass migration, so I imagine we can build an airport and some houses. Or maybe, shock horror, we should train up domestic workers rather than bringing new ones from overseas…
UK productivity has been disappointing for about 15 years, there are by definition millions of people in less productive jobs that could move into the infra delivery sector.
it's always about the availability of real resources, never about 'finding the money'.
If the resources needed to build runways, houses, transmission grid etc are currently employed, they will need o be made unemployed. That's what tax is really for.
Though Catch 22 is a risk. "We can't build the housing we need because we don't have enough housing for the people needed to build the housing." would be a suboptimal outcome.
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https://www.bigissue.com/news/social-justice/dwp-disability-benefit-fraud-pip/
Do you think he is a liar?
🤪🤪
AI told me so.
https://bsky.app/profile/radiobeartime.com/post/3lguqdm2ins2d
We could even give it a catchy name
Something to do with service and the nation…
That part is nuts. Support the project or not, feasible economically or not, the Planning Permission shouldn't take 4 years to get to a Yes or No.
h o ld s l o y a l t y t o
left hand
hand right
p o l i t i c s
Obviously this should be a short term solution.
That by itself isn't the problem
Immigration is necessary but those overstaying their visas is an issue.
Mostly these are students overstaying
It seems overstaying your visa is a major issue
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/
The manufacturers couldn't keep up with demand and there weren't enough raw materials available to do so.
This led to extended lead times, from 5-7 days to 10-16 weeks. If you could purchase them at all.
1/2
We ran out of sand and cement, tiles, timber, most of the core materials required.
It also led to huge inflation in the cost of materials.
Batten for example rose from £0.48 per metre to £1.50 in under 2 months.
This is also going to be an issue in another boom.
That's the actual trajectory of all "postliberal" guff... but they're just not serious.
Problem is most benefit recipients ie pensioners would be a danger on construction sites
How did the USA build a transcontinental railroad?
The answer is: disenfranchised slave labour.
It’s been de rigueur for a while. Do you have an iPhone?
By which I'm not being snarky - but asking the question 'why not AI?' is quite instructive.
a) People that AI makes redundant (call centres & coders short term likely) may not deploy easily to construction (which has a lot of training these days).
Not a rhetorical question. I'm just not aware of where I can find it.
Green light all the developments you want, but if you haven't got the workers then nothings getting built
Oh, and all the journalists replaced by AI 😑
Still big labour shortages both for site workers and less so, but still there in supply chain and transport.
Also stop wasting space on sweeping curved cul de sacs and garages you can't fit a car in.
No government can predict the future.
No government can retrospectively enact an immigration policy.
Net migration is set to continue at around 300k / year. I'm sure there will be plenty of builders and civil engineers in that lot.
Oh well. Let’s just wrap up warm, watch the telly and stagnate.
Can you pop me down for a few hours?
About 8.6m in the two years to Jun 2024 according to ONS. (Was about 3.6m in 2018/19.)
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/datasets/longterminternationalimmigrationemigrationandnetmigrationflowsprovisional
Nope.
"Quality" of your "prejudice" shining through.
Then try to apply it to someone other than yourself.
Just as if I earn £20,000 in the year ending in Nov 24, and 21,000 in the year ending Dec 24, I haven't earned £41,000 in 13 months.
Immigration has still gone up a tad (factor of 3+) in recent years.
Take us back into Europe FFS.
Aeroplanes are killing us.
Why does nobody care?
So maybe just turn all west london into a construction site and do it all in one place?
The sort of country that prioritises building runways in the midst of a climate emergency, in other words.
Oh....
Praise be.
Can I please ask for every northener, every scot, even midlanders, why?
Why do 100,000s of northerners travel longer to get to a london airport, than it takes to get to their destination?
We need an Hub airport in the North, not a third Heathrow runway
We need to build electric or hydrogen powered planes, but in the medium term, you are accepting my pollution for 4 and half hours travel from Birstall to Gatwick, or alternative london airport, even before I get onto a plane!
Environmentalists need to be practical!
At least its not just your pollution...
Is there something in the water that makes southerners not have the foggiest idea about the north?
Please make it make sense!
I am not spending 18 plus hours on the train.
This is why the greens cannot get thevotes and support they deserve, bc you're stuck in an absolute mindset, without compromise, and many many people find the absolutism impractical!
https://www.nationalgrid.com/the-great-grid-upgrade
Chat-GPTs next job will be in a JCB
Child care is another: kid gets sick, can't come to work.
The machine elves told me where it was.
… I’m not doing shrooms again.
Our population isn't getting any younger and a lot of UK housing is awkward.
The next day migrant fear,
Nothing that's consistent,
Now you're a 21st century Keir...
If the resources needed to build runways, houses, transmission grid etc are currently employed, they will need o be made unemployed. That's what tax is really for.