Skills shortage holding back Wales’ construction industry

A skill shortage could be holding back Wales’ construction industry say the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

Wales has the biggest shortage of quantity surveyors in the UK according to figures from the latest survey by the RICS. Quantity surveyors are the scarcest category of skills in Wales’s construction industry, with 94% of respondents saying that a shortage of quantity surveyors is posing a problem for them compared to the UK average of 62%.

Construction workloads rose in the second quarter of this year, according to the balance of Welsh surveyors, however there was a slowdown in the rate of growth with skills shortages highlighted as a key challenge for the sector.

Robert Fisher MRICS, of Robert Fisher Limited in Swansea, said: “There is a high demand for quality contractors but there is limited supply”.