Warrington has plenty of construction work going on. Logistics hubs along the M6 and M62, new housing developments popping up across the borough, Sci-Tech Daresbury still expanding, warehousing and distribution centres going up left and right. There’s no shortage of projects. But there’s a very real shortage of people to actually build them.
The North West’s construction workforce got smaller last year, and the distance between what’s being planned and who’s around to do the work keeps growing. So what’s going wrong, and what can local employers do to fix it?
The Numbers Behind the Squeeze
The CITB’s Construction Workforce Outlook 2026-30 puts it bluntly: the North West needs an average of 4,990 extra construction workers every single year. That’s 2.0% of its 2025 workforce, which is the highest proportional requirement of any English region. For comparison, the England average sits at 1.6%.
But the numbers only tell part of the story. The regional workforce dropped from 260,160 to 254,620 in the most recent data. And during that same period, construction wages in the North West rose well above the England average, driven by competition for a shrinking pool of skilled workers. When you’ve got fewer workers and rapidly rising pay, that’s a proper shortage, not a temporary dip.
In Warrington, where commercial and residential projects are fighting over the same limited pool of tradespeople and professionals, it’s an especially tough situation.
Where the Gap Really Bites
You might think the shortage is mostly about entry-level labour. It isn’t. The CITB’s data shows that civil engineers and construction project managers are the most in-demand roles across the North West, with annual growth of 2.8% and 2.5% respectively. These are the people who keep complex sites running safely and on programme, and they’re incredibly hard to find right now.
Temporary works coordination is a good example of how tricky this gets. A CITB Temporary Works Co-ordinator Training Course takes two days, costs around £435 and doesn’t have formal entry requirements. So getting the certificate itself isn’t particularly difficult. But the CITB is clear that the certificate on its own doesn’t make someone competent.
What actually matters is everything behind it: years of hands-on site experience, a solid understanding of BS 5975, familiarity with how different trades interact on a busy site, and the judgement to manage risk in live construction environments. You can’t fast-track that kind of knowledge, and it’s exactly what employers can’t find enough of.
What’s Already Happening Locally
Warrington isn’t starting from nothing, which is worth pointing out. Construction and site management skills bootcamps are already running across Cheshire and Warrington, with local colleges offering pathways into the sector for career changers and younger people looking for their first break.
There’s also been a bigger structural change worth paying attention to. Adult skills funding now goes through the new Cheshire and Warrington combined authority instead of being directed from Whitehall. In practice, that means the people deciding where training money gets spent will actually understand the local labour market. For construction employers who’ve been struggling to recruit for years, that could end up making a genuine difference.
And the wider picture adds urgency to all of this. Over 100,000 people across Cheshire and Warrington are economically inactive, roughly 20% of the potential workforce. That number hasn’t budged much in two decades. If targeted skills programmes could bring even a small fraction of those people into construction roles, employers would absolutely notice the difference.
More Than a Labour Shortage
Warrington’s construction pipeline is strong, and the demand for workers won’t ease any time soon. There are plenty of projects and plenty of ambition. What’s missing are the people with the right experience and site knowledge to deliver them, and that gap is only getting wider.
For local employers, higher pay alone won’t solve this. They’ll need to invest in training and support new entrants through structured programmes. And now that devolved skills funding is available locally, they should be making proper use of it too. Warrington’s building boom can keep going, but only if the workforce catches up.
