Single-lever policy simulation · housing

Construction skills investment

£2.0bn/yr (current)£4.0bn/yr (+100%)10-year projection

This report models the effect of raising construction-skills investment from £2.0bn/yr (current) to £4.0bn/yr (+100%) — with every other government policy left unchanged — on housing, projected over 10 years.

Bottom line

Eases Housing supply gap, Rent pressure and House prices, but worsens Fiscal pressure.

A single lever moved in isolation — which no real government does. Figures are modelled projections, not predictions. How the model works →

Direct effects

Housing supply gap

moderate improvement

Why: Training apprentices and retraining into construction is a 2–4y pipeline — investment now eases the labour constraint on housebuilding from the late 2020s

Effect builds over 2–3 years

Knock-on effects

Reached indirectly, as the direct effects propagate through the system. Ordering reflects how the effect spreads, not a literal sequence in time.

Rent pressuremild
House pricesmild
Fiscal pressureslight
Model output — exact figures
Housing supply gap7564 (-11)
Rent pressure7268 (-4)
House prices6561 (-4)
Fiscal pressure6162 (+1)

Index points on a 0–100 scale. Lower is better for pressure metrics; higher is better for outcomes like GDP and satisfaction.

Construction skills investment: £2.0bn/yr (current) → £4.0bn/yr (+100%) · Britain 2036