Timothy Clement, Director of Social Value & Sustainability, Morgan Sindall Construction
Young people who are not in education, employment or training are too often talked about as if they are the problem. The evidence says otherwise. Alan Milburn’s interim Young People and Work Review found that eight in ten want work or training. Many are sending around 100 job applications a month and hearing little or nothing back. That isn’t a motivation problem. It’s a system that isn’t replying, let alone connecting.
And the numbers are going the wrong way. The review warns that without intervention, the number of young people who are NEET could rise by 25% over five years to 1.25 million. Six in ten have never had a job, and mid- and lower-skilled jobs have fallen by 1.6 million over the past decade. Timing matters too. A young person who hasn’t entered the workforce by 24 is much less likely to be in work at 34, so falling out of the labour market early follows people for years.
For construction this is not a side issue. We need skilled people, from carpenters to electricians, and a generation of young people is being left outside the door. At Morgan Sindall Construction we’re tackling this on several fronts. Three of them show where we’re heading.
1. Rise & Build
The first is Rise & Build, the national programme we formally launch in February 2027. Rise is about supply, preparing people for work. Build is about demand, the opportunities themselves. Businesses are usually seen only as the demand side, the ones creating jobs. We think business can contribute to both if we organise ourselves properly in places, working with the public sector, civil society and other businesses, and if we offer mentoring and a first chance at work to people who have been let down by a system that wasn’t built for them.
Rise & Build is focused on construction trades and roles across our supply chain, because that’s where the real work is for our industry. It is not restricted to young people and seeks to includes all ages. It’s for anyone who needs a way into work, whatever their age. That said, young people who are at risk of becoming NEET or already classified as such are a major policy concern for UK government, local authorities and the third sector – and we recognise the challenges here need to be addressed early on.
The focus on place is deliberate, because labour markets are local. As a contractor we see that on every project. The skills our supply chain struggles to find, the schools, colleges and charities we work with, and the barriers people face all change from one town to the next. A national programme only works if it’s rooted in the place where it runs.
2. First Chance
Next is First Chance, the campaign Alan Milburn launched on 22 September, and we are one of its founding signatories. It comes out of his review, which was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions and published on an interim basis in May 2026, with the full report due any day. First Chance asks employers to commit to one or more of three things: opening entry-level jobs to young people who are NEET and face barriers to work; offering work experience, insight days and mentoring; and creating or expanding apprenticeships, internships and other structured routes into work.
As Alan Milburn and others quite rightly point out, somebody once gave most of us a chance to get our careers going. I find that an inspiring message, because working lives are shaped by small moments and individual interventions.
We are glad to support First Chance. Among the commitments we are making is to work towards 10% of our early careers intake being young people who are at risk of becoming NEET or already are. That gives us a target we can be measured against, but it is the foundational part, getting our own workforce right. The bigger job for the construction industry is in the trades and roles across our supply chain, and that’s where Rise & Build comes in.
3. Industry Collaboration
Third, we’re helping to build the coalition this needs. For instance, we supported Business in the Community’s session on the role of business in place at this year’s Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. Ndidi Okezie OBE chaired it as a proper discussion, with people from business, local government and civil society around the same table, and Alan Milburn set the scene.
His starting point was that this crisis can’t be fixed with a pick and mix of short-term programmes, and that we have to stop blaming young people for it. National policy has to be flexible enough to respond to the needs of different places, because there is no single system or lever that will solve this. There was broad agreement in the room that this is a strategic business issue rather than a corporate social responsibility one.
What the room wanted was a joined-up approach that lasts, with business, local government, education providers and civil society working towards a shared ambition in each place. Mayors came up as natural conveners. The caveat, and it’s an important one, was that devolution has to come with access to data and information. Without it you can’t match courses to local job opportunities or know which partners to bring in, and I’d add that you can’t build the capacity the college system urgently needs for construction trades either. Howard Dawber, London’s Deputy Mayor for Business, made a related point: you have to understand the whole local system and ask whether learning actually leads to a job. There was also real concern that places without devolved powers could be left behind. For a business that works right across the country, that matters. A young person’s chances shouldn’t depend on whether their area has a mayor.
One point of consensus, which Matt Hyde OBE put well, was that every young person should have access to a mentor. It’s one of the most practical things business can offer. Most of us can name someone who opened a door for us early on, or encouraged us to carry on when things didn’t appear to be working out. Plenty of young people have nobody in their life who can do that. Matt also made the case for skilled volunteering, and for the small, hyper-local organisations that often reach young people first. They need to be properly involved in the work, and commissioned and funded to do it.
That Liverpool session closed with a call for a clear collective goal, and for every employer and partner to name one tangible action they can take. Ambition can be infectious when partners can see both the scale of the challenge and the practical part they can play. I think that’s the right test for all of us, and I’m sure businesses can do more with their skills and connections in the places they work. Knowing the numbers is not enough. Every business, ours included, should want to be able to say it played its part well, not only in creating meaningful careers but in working with others to transform places, one person at a time.