Property developers are being charged premium prices because of a lack of new recruits in the construction industry.

DFT has been told that some bricklayers in London are charging up to £1,000 per day due to a shortage of skilled workers.

Despite a number of government schemes aimed at encouraging young people to take up apprenticeships in the construction industry, most do not consider it appealing.

“The building industry isn’t considered as sexy as some other professions these days and younger people are being pushed towards different lines of work,” said Ashley Ilsen, Head of Lending at Regentsmead.

“If we can help change the face of this then we may start to see the skill shortage improve.”

Scott Marshall, Operations Director at Roma Finance, said even if the young took up apprenticeships, there would still be a considerable skills shortage in the short term.

“It’s unlikely that these new apprentices will be trained and experienced in time to make a major difference in the next few years, which is a crucial time for the construction industry to deliver the housing required,” said Scott.

“We need a more sustained long term approach which will encourage more young people to get proper training and apprenticeships in the construction sector and a framework from government to support construction in periods of low economic growth.”

The skills shortage has raised fears that George Osborne’s target of building 400,000 new affordable homes by 2020 will be at risk.

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the Federation of Master Builders, said a new generation of ‘real’ builders is needed to make the Chancellor’s vision for housing a reality.

“We’re already seeing housing developments starting to stall because the cost of hiring skilled tradespeople is threatening to make some sites simply unviable,” said Brian.

“Unless we see a massive uplift in apprenticeship training in our industry, there won’t be enough pairs of hands to deliver more housing on this scale.”

Ashley said the lack of skilled labour was by far the biggest complaint from amongst his clients who consist mainly of smaller developers.

“This really is the result of numerous problems here, for example, as with a lot of issues in the building industry, the larger housebuilders seems to have priority and first choice over a lot of the skilled labour available and end up creating scarcity for the rest of the industry,” said Ashley.

Scott said the high prices paid for skilled workers is affecting the amount of affordable homes being built.

“This inevitably squeezes margins and/or increases the sale prices of houses, making it less affordable for people to buy new homes,” said Scott.

“There seems to be a number of barriers for the construction industry when it comes to investing in new builds, and these could result in the government missing its ambitious target for a million new homes by 2020.”

Brian concluded by saying that the small developer will play a crucial role in whether or not the government can achieve its affordable housing ambitions.

“The last time we built in excess of 200,000 homes in one year was in the late 1980s when two-thirds of all homes were built by small developers,” said Brian.

“SME house builders now only build [a] little over one-quarter of all new homes, which points to another serious capacity issue – we need more small house builders to enter the market and also for SME house builders to crank up their delivery of new homes in order to build the Chancellor’s 400,000 new affordable homes.”