He said: "If we don't have any apprenticeships, we don't have the right product." The housebuilder is working with its regular, long-term specialist subcontractors, particularly bricklayers and plumbers, to recruit young people as apprentices.
Berkeley Homes will invest about £400 000 in the first year to take on 30 apprentices and expects to eventually increase this to £1m.
The apprentices will earn £250 a week over the three years of their apprenticeship. Pidgley said: "We are paying them that amount because you don't get young people for buttons." The housebuilder will pay the salary in full in the first year.
Over the following two years, the firm will share the cost with its specialist contractors, who will pay 50% in the second year and 75% in the third.
As the recruits, to be called improvers, gain experience, they will perform increasingly high value work for the subcontractors.
Pidgley said Berkeley and its subcontractors would visit schools and colleges looking for good candidates, but added that the current unpopularity of construction as a career would be a barrier.
He said: "This is a start because we have got to do something about recruitment and not just carp." He added: "The maximum target is to get it up to such a level that the rest of the industry will have to follow." Pidgley warned last month that skills shortages were critical. He blamed the crisis on construction's poor training record and government tax policy.
The Construction Confederation, which is itself visiting schools to increase the number of young people entering the industry, welcomed the housebuilder's plan.
Keith Aldis, the confederation's director of training, said: "I think it is a marvellous move and I would like to see more companies going down that road."
