Clive was joined by the National Federation of Builders for their thoughts, as well as great friend of the show Scott from Bro’s Carpentry.

Rico from the National Federation of Builders said: “Education is important in this whole academic strategy for us. What is critical for us is that if you want to be a surveyor, you are going to have good maths grades or great with maths in general. We need to have a course in construction maybe at GCSE or tasters that offer the flexibility to young school kids to go back to the path when they feel like.”

A caller Ben said: “One thing stopping the kids from coming in is because of health and safety. There is too much of it, much of it is actually common sense, which isn’t that common anymore. Fed up of any job I go to there’s someone who doesn’t do my job, never done my job, but because they have a degree they have a right to tell me how to do my job. I can guarantee there’s people within the HSE that have never laid a brick in their life but will happily tell a brickie how to lay a brick. There’s not one site in the UK that goes by the book, I can guarantee in one way or another corners are cut to make the job easier because it’s just not doable.”

Another from Marshall Timber Products said: “We struggle like crazy to hire and then keep the new recruits. If they could come to site for taster days I think that would help. Then we have the problem of liability insurance costs. Something needs to be done at government level.”

And Paul from Metro Plumb said: “When I was at school we had one afternoon a week for three months opportunity to go to College and we did a bit of bricklaying, a bit of electrics and also a bit of plastering, but I also think that as soon as the kids join secondary school they should be given credits and they should learn how to manage their credits and earn their books and stationary and things like that so they actually learn about values of life and what it is like to be an adult in the real world.

Scott said: “Trade oriented courses like metal work, woodwork etc should be reintroduced in schools to give young kids to start developing interest in the trades very early on. Our generation didn’t have what the older generation before us had as in study or learn while at schools subjects that helped them to see the trades as very attractive or appealing after school. What we had was a bit of plastic work and working with boxes. Nothing serious.”

For the full show, listen here