Building boss Norman Barr: School leavers can hardly read
Employer laments passing of apprenticeships as he turns to eastern Europe for skilled staff
Published: 3rd June, 2011
by PETER GRUNER
THE boss of one of Islington’s oldest and most distinguished builders says he is having to employ skilled labour from abroad because of poor literacy skills and lack of discipline among home-grown young people.
Norman Barr, managing director of Henry Hardy, has written to Prime Minister David Cameron about the issue, and urged him to bring back traditional apprenticeships and training schemes.
The firm, founded in 1860 and based in Canonbury, employs up to 50 craftsmen who specialise in restoring old and historic buildings to their former glory.
Its craftspeople famously restored the 500-year-old Canonbury Tower using its original Elizabethan structures.
Mr Barr said he was appalled by the quality of young school leavers seeking jobs with the firm, “many of whom are ill-disciplined and can hardly read or write”.
He added: “We can’t employ people if they can’t read simple instructions, write out a worksheet, or if they have an attitude problem.”
A major problem is the lack of training in building skills, including carpentry and plumbing. “They don’t seem to teach woodwork and metalwork in schools anymore,” he said.
“And the colleges and universities are happy to turn out young people with useless art degrees rather than teach them a skill.”
He said that Britain’s building industry was short of 100,000 craftsmen and women and those gaps were being filled by skilled workers from eastern Europe.
“As a young man, I left school in Kentish Town with no qualifications but was able to train as a plumber at the former North London Polytechnic in Holloway.
“Now that poly is the London Met University, where you can train for almost anything but basic building skills.
“It breaks my heart that there are thousands of young people on the dole who would make excellent builders if they were only given the chance.
“We try and train as many as we can. But some of them just don’t have the discipline.
“You are expected to work five days a week. And if you are not on site by 7.30am don’t bother coming into work.”
Kevin McLoughlin – one of Islington’s biggest private employers – spoke out in the Tribune in February about the “scandal” of successive governments’ failure to encourage apprenticeships.
Mr McLoughlin, whose firm, K&M McLoughlin Decorating Limited, has won a £1.3million contract to paint the London Olympic stadium, launched a debate on the issue.
He argues that not only has a lack of training left millions of young people jobless but too many young graduates can’t find jobs because often their degrees are “worthless”.
Big building companies, he said, ignore local home-grown labour even though they are often paid millions in taxpayers’ money – our money – for developments. Instead, workers are brought in from the north of England and overseas.
Last year, the company opened Britain’s first Decorating School for apprentices at their premises in Essex Road, Canonbury.