An alarming new CITB report reveals 42% of construction firms are struggling to recruit workers with the right skills while one in 20 businesses fear that a lack of talent is putting them at risk of going under.

The CITB claims the skills time bomb is putting 62,000 jobs at risk.

Nearly one in five employers said that skills shortages had hampered their growth over the last two years, while over a tenth had lost out on work due to their competitors having a more skilled workforce.

The CITB has now teamed up with JCB to launch the Construction4Growth Skills Drive to encourage a new generation of youngsters into construction.

James Wates, Chairman of CITB, said: “Our report clearly shows that more needs to be done to address construction’s skills ‘time bomb’, to safeguard jobs and ensure that growth is possible.

“With major projects such as the new nuclear build programme coming online in the next five years, now is the time to start sparking the imagination of young people and harnessing their talent for the future of the industry – any delay now could be putting the industry’s growth on hold.

“It is for this very reason that CITB will be hitting the roads this week, visiting schools and skills academies across England and Wales with its Construction4Growth Skills Drive, to support the industry in recruiting more young people. We need to show that construction is a high-tech, world class industry with outstanding career prospects.”