Whilst women make up 13% of the construction workforce, only 1% of manual trade workers are women[1]. In the context of a skills shortage in construction, which will only get worse following Brexit, this is a serious loss of potential talent to the construction and maintenance industry.
As part of our work to improve lives, communities and society, we have therefore been delighted to support the “Tradeswomen into Maintenance Project” through writing a free “Legal Guide” for social landlords, ALMOs and local authorities that want to address this imbalance through their procurement and contracting processes.
The “Legal Guide” explains relevant equality and procurement legislation (including the “Social Value Act”) and sets out the steps clients can take to promote the creation of opportunities for women to take up and thrive in maintenance careers. It includes template clauses for each stage of the procurement and contracting process. These are “open access” for copyright purposes, meaning that they can be freely copied and used. A copy of the legal guide can be found here. This Legal Guide is one of a number of good practice guides which aim to support landlords and other businesses working in the social housing and public sector to increase the number of women working in construction trades. The other guides include:
These can be downloaded from Mears website.
Please contact Andrew Millross.
[1] CITB figures for 2016
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