£10m campaign aims to build a new army of women bricklayers

THE wolf-whistling image of the nation’s bricklayers could soon be consigned to history, thanks to a Government-backed bid to recruit more women into the male-dominated construction sector.

A £10 million campaign will get under way this week with the aim of ‘diversifying’ the building industry, in which more than eight out of ten workers are men.

The plan is backed by the Department For Education and one of its aims will be to encourage bosses to avoid questions such as ‘Do you intend to have a baby?’ when interviewing female candidates.

The Pathways Into Construction initiative, involving more than 250 building firms, training colleges and other organisations, will also seek to combat the lack of ethnic minorities in the trade – with only seven per cent of workers currently coming from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds.

It will be overseen by the Construction Industry Training Board and its launch follows forecasts that construction output will grow by 1.3 per cent this year, with nearly 170,000 new jobs expected to be created by 2023.

However, there are concerns about how those vacancies will be filled amid Brexit uncertainty and the fact that the building industry attracts many workers from outside the UK. Only last year, The Mail on Sunday reported how a shortage of bricklayers was holding back Government pledges to boost housebuilding.

Organisers say the current lack of women and ethnic minority workers is partly because building firms rely on ‘traditional recruitment methods’ – such as promoting vacancies by word of mouth rather than publishing formal adverts.

The new scheme will seek to challenge that approach by giving guidance to employers on recruiting workers from ‘under-represented groups’ over the next three years.

The £10 million will be invested with hundreds of colleges, construction firms and councils as well as housing associations and charities to connect employers with people who would not traditionally be expected to enter the industry. Stephen Cole, head of careers strategy at the Construction Industry Training Board, said: ‘ With thousands of jobs being created in the coming years, Pathways Into Construction will demonstrate that we need to stop fishing in only half the pond and diversify the talent pool to meet future skills needs.

‘ We’ll explore the best routes, which employers can adopt in future, to bring under-represented groups i nto t he i ndustry, not only filling the skills gap but also supporting employers by recruiting domestic talent with Brexit on the horizon.’