Brexit

The Work at Height Regulations save lives and are hugely popular in the construction sector. But will moves to ‘sunset’ all EU laws dilute – or even destroy – them? Behind the innocuous-sounding ‘Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill’, lies the prospect of an assault by the government on…

The incoming government needs to urgently address the negative impact of the new post-Brexit standards regime on the building products market, finds Greg Pitcher The year was 1993. Inflation ran as low as 1.6 per cent, Manchester United won the inaugural Premier League and the CE mark was introduced in…

Construction firms need more help training homegrown workers to replace the EU nationals sucked out of the UK labour market by Brexit, Keith Cooper discovers

Warnings about the impact of Brexit on the construction workforce came thick and fast once the results of the June 2016 poll were in. Trainee numbers had fallen to a…

Boris Johnson’s time in office was a tumultuous and historic period unlike any other. Throughout much of it, the prime minister rarely missed an opportunity to don a hard hat and get out on a construction site, as the industry he declared would Build Back Better was rarely far from…

Lisa Kingston is managing director of legal services firm In-House Law Brexit has brought changes to the recruitment and immigration landscape that will have huge knock-on effects in construction, hampering the sector’s ability to recruit and retain appropriate labour. Upcoming deadlines this summer will only exacerbate skills shortages, and may…

Alan Kennedy is an associate at law firm Womble Bond Dickinson Issues with visas and increased red tape look set to price migrant workers out of the employment market, following the UK’s departure from the European Union. The fees linked to employing migrant workers from the European Economic Area (EEA)…

With the transition period expiring on 31 December, the prospect of leaving the European Union without a deal is becoming a very real possibility. Add a global pandemic to the challenges of Brexit and the result, as viewed by Irwin Mitchell LLP and the National Federation of Builders, is that…

Last week saw the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), the body that advises the government on migration issues, recommend that employers should still be allowed to recruit bricklayers from abroad after 1 January, when the new points-based visa system comes into force. If adopted, this would be a welcome step forward.…

Having barely emerged from the epicentre of what has been the biggest global event of most of our lifetimes, the idea of planning for a different crisis feels, well, slightly bizarre. But having spent most of yesterday afternoon and this morning going through the government’s new immigration policy document, construction…

Yesterday, the Home Office confirmed exactly what its much-anticipated points-based immigration system will look like. Here’s what construction companies need to know about it. Which trades have made it onto the ‘skilled’ list? The good news for construction is that a raft of specialist trades previously not deemed ‘skilled’ have…