BiKBBI at The House of Lords in support of TrustMark's skills research

On Thursday 27 March 2025, BiKBBI joined a host of industry bodies, financial institutes, thought leaders and Government officials at the House of Lords to attend the Parliamentary Reception of TrustMark’s New Skills Research Report.

The event brought the industry together to hear the key findings of the report, titled ‘Skilled to Build: Empowering the UK’s RMI Sector for a better future’ – the result of a research project in conjunction with Eureka Research and Oxford Economics, with responses from 1,233 small and micro businesses from across the sector and the UK - including BiKBBI registered businesses.

Damian Walters commented "BiKBBI has been vocal on the subject of the skills gap for over a decade, so we were more than happy to support the research piece commissioned by TrustMark. Whilst we've used words like 'crisis' and 'catastrophe' when referring to labour shortages in the past, I think it's important that we swing terminology to include words such as 'opportunity' and 'potential'.

TrustMark's report identified the growth opportunity and additional GVA that could be created in the construction and RMI sectors if headroom vacancies were fulfilled is good for the UK economy.

If these vacancies were created and fulfilled, there is an opportunity to employ an additional 195,000 skilled tradespeople in the RMI sector. This is significantly larger than the 33,000 formally advertised vacancies in the overall construction sector from official statistics.4 If these vacancies were filled this would increase the RMI firms’ revenue by £9.6 billion, building on the £242.9 billion for the RMI sector’s total revenue in 2024.5 This would lead to the sector generating £4.1 billion in additional GVA, equivalent to 4.3% of the RMI sector’s £96 billion contribution to UK GVA.

BiKBBI hit the road in April, as it commences its schools engagement programme in conjunction with The University of Greenwich - CEO Damian Walters and the team will discuss fitted interiors industry with thousands of secondary school students, exploring NVQ's and the Fitted Interiors Apprenticeship.