Ian Hodgkinson

#Adopt an apprentice! It’s Apprenticeship Week 👷‍♂️🔥 If you’re a builder, contractor, subbie or business owner and you’re moaning there’s “no young ones coming through” this is the week to do something about it. There are good, hungry youngsters out there desperate for a start. I’ve shared a few over the last couple of weeks and guess what… a couple have already been taken on by decent bricklaying firms and contractors. Life-changing stuff. You don’t need to overthink it. Give them a chance, give them guidance, give them standards. They’ll give you graft, loyalty and the future of your trade. If you’ve got room for an apprentice, shout about it. If you know a youngster who wants in, put them forward. Let’s stop talking about the skills shortage and actually fix it. This industry gave me everything. Time to pass it on. 💪. #ApprenticeshipWeek #AdoptAnApprentice #ConstructionCareers #FutureOfTheTrade

BRICK REALITY CHECK: WE’RE LAYING FEWER BRICKS THAN OUR GRANDFATHERS DID There was an article in @thetimes yesterday about concrete demand hitting a 75-year low. About eight months ago, I flagged that concrete was already at a 60-year low. But let’s talk bricks because the picture is just as stark. In the 1960s and 70s, the UK was producing and laying 6–7 billion bricks a year. In 1938, estimates suggest production reached around 8 billion bricks. Fast forward to last year… The UK produced just 1.3 billion bricks. That’s not a slowdown. That’s a collapse. We’re now laying around one-fifth of the bricks we were laying 50–70 years ago at a time when the population is bigger, housing need is greater, and everyone agrees we’re short hundreds of thousands of homes. This isn’t about nostalgia or “the good old days”. It’s about capacity, skills, confidence and demand. When brick demand falls this far: • yards shut • factories mothball • skills are lost • apprentices don’t get taken on And just like concrete, once that capacity is gone, it doesn’t come back overnight. We can’t talk seriously about fixing the housing crisis while ignoring the most basic indicators of whether we’re actually building anything. When brick volumes are this low, the country simply isn’t building at scale. 👉 What are your thoughts ? are we finally at the point where the industry needs real intervention, not just warm words? @meganmilsteadd @BricklayersO #Construction #Bricklaying #HousingCrisis #Apprenticeships #UKBuilding #SkillsCrisis

The ⁦@DIYSOS⁩ team re-imagined as a painting by Rembrandt - The Night Watch