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Hopes that restrictions on overseas workers will be relaxed to help the industry cope with growing labour shortages will fall on deaf ears within the government, Modernise or Die author Mark Farmer has said.

The issue of has overtaken materials shortages as the industry鈥檚 biggest concern with top consultants telling 好色先生TV that queues on petrol station forecourts 鈥� caused by worries over a lack of HGV drivers to deliver fuel 鈥� have given the industry a foretaste of what鈥檚 to come for construction.

Andy Steele, the new chairman of Build UK, said the sector still needs unrestricted access to EU labour for the next few years while it brings in new recruits and gets them up to scratch. 鈥淭he industry needs to resolve these [skills] issues but turning off the tap, bang, will create issues and is creating issues,鈥� he added.

But Farmer, whose government-commissioned report came out five years ago this month, said Boris Johnson鈥檚 cabinet would not countenance such a move for construction and predicted the industry faced 鈥渟ome pain ahead鈥� as a result.

He told 好色先生TV: 鈥淟abour shortages are a bigger issue than materials, 100%. But, politically, the mood music says to me I don鈥檛 think we鈥檒l see a U-turn from the government. I don鈥檛 think we鈥檒l get to a point where they see construction as a primary case for visa dispensation.

鈥淚f the industry keeps thinking it has a get out of jail card, it won鈥檛 get around to dealing with the issues. This news has been brewing a long time. The penny鈥檚 dropped we鈥檝e got big problems and some pain ahead. I鈥檓 not sure issuing visas is going to create a new pool of workers anyway.鈥�

Johnson told last week鈥檚 Conservative party conference the current problems with worker shortages and supply chain issues were because the country was moving 鈥渢owards a high wage, high skill, high productivity economy鈥�.

But Steele said the government needed a rethink on the rules over who can come into the country after seeing other industries hit by shortages.

The government was recently forced into issuing 5,000 temporary visas for HGV drivers after last month鈥檚 problems at the petrol stations while some supermarkets ran out of food 鈥� although just over 300 have bothered to apply with the government admitting yesterday only around 20 have been issued.

Steele, who is also Osborne chief executive, said the government needed to look again at its shortage occupation list on who from the EU can come into the UK and work.

鈥淸High wages and high skills are] great in theory but somewhere there is a cost in all this,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ither we will get inflation or demand will drop because of spiralling costs.鈥�

He said the government could come up with a quota system, allocating a set number of workers for construction which would eventually taper off.

Asked how long it should be in place, he said: 鈥淭hree or four years. There needs to be a degree of relaxation of the skills coming back in but it can鈥檛 be for three months. We need a transition, rather than turning the tap off. Training people up takes a good couple of years at least.鈥�

He has already raised the issue with the Construction Leadership Council whose leads on skills, Mace chief executive Mark Reynolds, last week said construction needed a 鈥渄emand-led鈥� system of long-term visas rather than short-term ones if it wanted to fill gaps in labour supply.

Steele also said government giving industry more surety on pipelines would help make inroads into bringing more people into construction.

He added: 鈥淗ow can any construction company ever invest, ever understand what its future workload is going to be unless it鈥檚 got security of pipeline?

鈥淲e need to be able to attract more people to be able to train them into an industry that isn鈥檛 attractive to a lot of people.鈥�

Gleeds executive director Douglas McCormick has also said the government needed to look again at the issue of who can come otherwise the 鈥渋nability to get European labour into this country鈥�means it may take longer to get jobs done鈥�.

Employment in the sector fell from 2.3m in 2017 to 2.1m at the end of 2020, representing a 4% fall in UK-born workers and a 42% fall in EU workers, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This week the ONS said construction vacancies were at an all-time high with more 40,000 posts left unfilled in the three months to the end of September.

Yesterday, the ONS said ongoing labour shortages again helped to blunt construction output with the figure for August down 0.2% on the month before and now 1.5% below last February鈥檚 pre-pandemic level.