Skills scheming

Both Sir Michael Latham and Sir John Egan recognised in their respective reports that a fully qualified labour force was essential for the future efficiency, safety and reputation of the construction industry.

Most people, particularly the small and medium-sized constructors (SMCs) that train most of our operatives and managers, wholeheartedly agreed. They didn't realise, however, that this support was to be abused by the large contractors and unions when they introduced the restrictive registration scheme, the Construction Skills Certification Scheme. This is now administered by the Construction Industry Training Board, funded mainly by the SMCs.

Many of the training SMCs persuaded their craftsmen to register with the CSCS by paying their registration fees and the training required to achieve the appropriate safety certification. My own company did so because we believed it was a positive step forward, and that soon all the best clients would demand CSCS registration from their constructors.

About a year ago, the CSCS introduced an extension of the scheme to cover site and construction managers, even though their qualification registration was already certified by the Chartered Institute of Building and Institution of Civil Engineers corporate membership structure.

I wrote to Tony Merricks, chairman of the CSCS, saying that we were considering registration of our management and administration staff but that we were concerned that the confidential and commercially valuable information held by the CSCS could find its way into competitors' hands. The register could become a recruitment tool for unprincipled contractors that don't train.

Despite assurances that all confidential information remained totally secure and was not accessible to other parties, a serious breach has occurred.

In January this year, some operatives on the CSCS register received a letter inviting them to pay £150 to register with "Trade-Check.com, which has been created by tradespeople for tradespeople". The letter said: "There is a central register for all CSCS-accredited individuals like yourself, to which all the major construction companies are subscribing. This enables them to choose and select the very best."

What is the point of restrictive registration of employees at a time of acute labour shortages?

Whether or not this is true, security has been broken, threatening the livelihood of all smaller training employers that have mistakenly registered their craftsmen with the CSCS. Hopefully, none will yet have registered their management staff, or they too will soon disappear. More seriously, the episode questions the intentions of registration schemes such as Constructionline and the quality mark.

If SMCs cannot trust the government and the industry's institutions, they cannot afford to register anything with anyone. We are not going to register our management staff with the CSCS and will no longer support the registration of our operatives, but develop our own alternatives. I strongly recommend all SMCs to follow us quickly, before it is too late.

The Office of Fair Trading has made it clear that the Major Contractors Group (and presumably the Construction Clients Confederation) cannot insist on CSCS registration and must accept "equivalent qualifications". But the publicity and pressure on smaller employers from the Major Contractors' Group and the CITB implies that all employees must be 100% registered with CSCS by 2003, or they will get no work.

I believe that this is deliberately misleading in order to panic training employers into adding their operative and management names and addresses to the MCG recruitment list like lambs to the slaughter.

Anyway, what is the point of restrictive registration of employees at a time of acute labour shortages and low recruitment? It is hardly the right time to make it more difficult for people to join the industry solely to beneft the growing army of certification and accreditation bodies.