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Skills England calls for reskilling construction workforce to further Modern Methods of Construction.
The Skills England report, published on September 24, highlights a significant opportunity for the expansion of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) to address the construction industry’s labour shortages and productivity challenges. This expansion is seen as key to achieving the government’s ambitious target of delivering 1.5 million new homes by 2030. The report also makes the case that widespread adoption of MMC could alleviate workforce shortages while improving efficiency in the sector.
In its analysis, Skills England outlines the urgent need for an additional 252,000 construction workers between 2024 and 2028, a figure presented by the Construction Industry Training Board even before Labour’s house building plans were unveiled. The report goes further, pointing out that the demand will not be limited to housing, with new transport, education, health, and energy infrastructure also requiring a substantial increase in capacity. As such, the introduction of MMC could play a critical role in reducing reliance on the shrinking pool of skilled labour while driving the sector’s overall productivity.
The report is cautious, though, about the practical challenges of MMC adoption. Although a 430-home development in Birmingham demonstrated that MMC could deliver efficiency improvements of 50 per cent, the limited uptake of MMC across the sector is seen as a significant barrier to progress. The collapse of key UK modular builders like Ilke Homes and Caledonian Modular also raises questions about the sector’s resilience, with the report acknowledging the need for more strategic coordination and clear government intervention to prevent further failures.
Mark Farmer, a leading UK industry expert and advocate for MMC, stressed the importance of defining MMC clearly to ensure effective policy and implementation in a recent LinkedIn post. “Government and Skills England need to be very clear about the use of the term MMC,” Farmer remarked. “Homebuilding capacity growth, workforce productivity implications, and skills training needs vary significantly between the seven defined categories of MMC. If we don’t align housing policy, skills policy, and industrial strategy, we risk repeating past mistakes.”
Farmer also highlighted the importance of hybrid pre-manufactured solutions, such as panelised systems, which have seen greater success compared to volumetric modular housing. Hybrid methods, which incorporate prefabricated components into traditional construction projects, offer an immediate pathway to addressing labour shortages without the market challenges faced by fully modular solutions. However, even these methods will require reskilling of the existing workforce to handle the new construction interfaces, tolerances, and details that come with MMC.
The report recognises the complexities of expanding MMC use, with past efforts under the previous government delivering limited results. Despite public bodies being encouraged to favour MMC bids in procurement since 2019, the uptake has been low, and in January 2024, the House of Lords Built Environment Committee criticised ministers for failing to provide a clear strategy for investing in MMC.
While the report makes a strong case for MMC, it falls short of offering detailed, actionable steps for overcoming these barriers. The emphasis on upskilling the workforce and improving productivity through MMC is clear, but how this will be achieved in practice remains an open question. The report does, however, highlight the need for better coordination between industry stakeholders, local authorities, and central government, but offers few specifics on how to ensure this alignment happens.
Farmer’s proposal for embracing standardised designs through a planning passport system offers a potential route to simplifying MMC adoption. For example, New South Wales recently published a shortlist of designs for their Pattern Book competition
Download the report HERE
