We love everything about being a brickie… everyone can see you work, say students earning £1,000 a week in trade
YOUNG brickies are laying the building blocks for their future thanks to brilliant apprenticeships – and can earn up to £2,500 a WEEK.
But despite the huge pay-packets on offer in the trade, it is currently facing a chronic shortage of workers.
The Sun on Sunday’s Builder Better Britain campaign has been launched to highlight how the industry can give youngsters like Jeorgie Percer and Lucas Robinson a vital, well-paid career.
Apprentice bricklayer Lucas is finally doing his “dream job” after school teachers told him he must go to university.
The 22-year-old landed a place to study business at Nottingham Trent Uni but at the last minute decided to become a builder.
When he qualifies in June he is set to earn £1,000 a week because there are only 70,000 skilled bricklayers working in Britain today, despite the Government’s plan to build 300,000 new homes a year.
The lack of young recruits and apprentices has led the Government to add brickies, carpenters, plasterers, tilers and roofers to the shortage occupation list.
This means migration rules have been relaxed for those with these skills.
Lucas, from Nottingham, told The Sun on Sunday: “I’d encourage anybody to become a bricklayer.
“You can show off your skills, earn good money, keep fit, be in the fresh air and have a laugh. What’s not to love?
“I have been doing it for two years and can already lay 300 to 400 bricks a day which, once I qualify in June, will be worth £200 a day.
“But throughout school I was discouraged from doing it by the teachers, even though there was a course there to do it.
“Therefore I didn’t even see it as an option for years and just focused on getting the grades and going to uni.
‘We pay the price’
“At the last minute though I got cold feet. I realised it wasn’t for me.
“My dad is a bricklayer, he has mates in the business so he helped me get an apprenticeship.
“University might be right for some but I’m pleased I changed my mind.
“I live in my own place, work outside and love everything about bricklaying.
“On site we are like one big family who laugh all day. We are in the open air enjoying life.
“I know I have a career for the future as we need bricklayers.”
We launched our Builder Better Britain campaign last week to urge young people to take up skilled work in construction.
Skills Minister Robert Halfon says £2.7billion is available to encourage firms to offer apprenticeships. Yet things could be better.
Bricklayer boss Ian Hodgkinson says the Government should simplify apprenticeship levies to make it easier for firms like his to recruit.
Ian, 59, said: “I am proud to say that about a quarter of my team, both men and women, started as apprentices with me. But we pay the price for having apprentices.”
The Apprenticeship Levy, introduced five years ago, is a tax on employers to fund apprenticeship training.
Employers with an annual pay bill of more than £3million must pay it.
There is also a CITB Levy, which is used to support construction employers to make sure industry has the skilled workforce it needs.
Ian, who runs Hodgkinson Builders in Derby, says: “The feedback I get from others in the industry is the levies are too complicated.
“We read billions of Apprenticeship Levy funds are returned to the Government, it’s not surprising.
“I pay the CITB Levy, which ends up being like a secondary tax.
“It’s complicated and difficult to administer, particularly for smaller companies, and it is these smaller companies that require the most help with recruitment and apprentices.
“We need to make it easy for youngsters to get apprenticeships and for us to take them on.”
He added: “The Government goes on about building 300,000 houses a year to keep up with demand but with fewer than 70,000 bricklayers in this country each one has got to build four houses each year. It is just not going to happen.
“I am pleased the Government has put bricklaying on the shortage occupation list as foreign workers will come back into the country and help with the situation we’ve got.”
Staff from Ian’s house-building and property development company are starring in new BBC Three series Brickies, showing the banter, fallouts and friendships.
He added: “Some of the junior staff that work for me can earn £1,000 a week. The more senior £2,500 a week.
“But since the Nineties we have had people like Tony Blair saying the route to everything is by going to university, so you were made to believe that if you hadn’t gone to university you’d already failed.
“That is not the case at all. A building site is a fantastic place to work but you won’t catch many teachers encouraging students to go into bricklaying instead of spending three years at university.
“Obviously university is right for a lot of people, and we need youngsters going to uni, but they need to be told there are other avenues. That’s where apprenticeships come in.”
In a 2018 YouGov survey statistics showed that just 11 per cent of 15 to 18-year-olds are likely to be encouraged towards an apprenticeship rather than further education at a uni.
And 73 per cent of students claimed the most likely recommendation made to them by their school or college would be to take a uni route.
Yet those who do go on apprenticeship schemes have a good chance of a reliable future.
One study found that 85 per cent of apprentices stay in employment, and 64 per cent of these continue working with the same employer.
Not just career for boys
In Leeds, bricklayer Stuart Nicklin has struggled to recruit apprentices. One job advert led to just three applicants.
Stuart, 52, said: “Instead of going to uni and coming out with debt they could be laying bricks, cutting wood, learning a craft on the job and earning good money.
“The academic pipeline teachers are trying to push the youth of today down is not for every child.
“I understand the Government recruiting from abroad but I have found there’s often a language barrier and we don’t know what type of training they have.”
And it’s not just a career boys should be looking into, either.
Jeorgia Percer fought to get to where she is today despite being discouraged from the trade.
She said: “In the final year of school we were able to go to college a day a week to do either brick-laying, farming or hairdressing. I was told I was doing hairdressing.
“As a kid you don’t know what you want to do so someone should have sat me down and discussed the options available.
“One day I said to my dad, as a joke, I’d like to be a brickie. He rang a college and got me an apprenticeship.”
Now Jeorgia, 22, from Monmouth, Gwent, and dad Mervyn work together.
The self-employed qualified brickie loves working outdoors, being her own boss and the workout that comes with her career.
She said: “On my college course there was only one other woman and I’ve only met two others on the job. But it is ace work.
“If I really grafted I could make £2,500 a week.
“You are problem-solving, using your brain, using muscles, having fun.
“I love being a brickie and would encourage young girls to join up too.”
STARTER DECLINE FEARS
By Kate Ferguson
BRITAIN is training just a third of the number of “starter” apprentices we were five years ago, new figures reveal.
Only 175,000 people were going through Level 2 apprenticeships last year, down from 487,000 in 2017, according to the Department for Education.
This is the first rung in the ladder, offered to pupils from age 16 as an alternative to A levels.
Experts branded the figures “shocking” and warned that working-class people from deprived communities such as those in Red Wall seats are hardest hit by the decline.
They urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to fix Britain’s broken apprenticeship levy system and give more cash for further education colleges to train brickies and plumbers of tomorrow.
The numbers pile pressure on Education Secretary Gillian Keegan to take more action on apprenticeships.
Iain Mansfield, head of education at the Policy Exchange think tank, said: “Apprenticeships are in freefall and we are all paying the price.
Traditionally, they have been a fantastic boost to social mobility, giving working-class Brits a way into learning a trade and earning decent money, and providing them and their families with economic security.
“But over the past few years we have seen a shocking fall-off in the take-up of apprenticeships, particularly entry-level ones which school leavers can do instead of going to university.
“What is the result? Teenagers leave school and end up in dead-end jobs, or on dead-end degrees, when they could be earning far more in skilled trades like bricklaying and plastering.”
Britain’s apprenticeship system has been overhauled over the past few years.
In 2017, Theresa May brought in an Apprenticeship Levy, which is a tax on businesses, to pay for more apprentices.
At the same time, rules around training also changed. This has seen a growth of higher and degree apprenticeships in areas such as business and management courses.
At the same time, take-up of Level 2 apprenticeships more usually done by working-class pupils has fallen off a cliff.
Mr Mansfield added: “The Government must urgently reform the apprenticeship levy to make it easier for small businesses to access the cash to train the next generation of brickies, technicians and carers.”