November 25, 2014 12.20 pm This story is over 112 months old

Ex-military scheme to create house building jobs in Lincolnshire

Ex-military jobs: A recruitment drive to bring ex-military personnel into the house building industry will create hundreds of jobs, and developments in North Hykeham.

A recruitment drive to bring ex-military personnel into the house building industry will create hundreds of jobs and developments, including in North Hykeham.

Persimmon Homes Yorkshire launched the initiative to combat a skills shortage in the construction industry.

The housebuilder is working with Nordic Focus Training, to retrain up to 500 people from the Army, Royal Navy and RAF in bricklaying and joinery, across its 24 regional businesses in England, Scotland and Wales.

Persimmon will build over 13,000 new homes in 2014 and plans to open many more developments in 2015.

The company has developments across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, including sites in Hull, Withensea, Selby, Scunthorpe, Hornsea, Retford, North Hykeham, Easingwold, Norton-on-Derwent and Doncaster.

Group CEO, Jeff Fairburn, said: “We have worked hard over the course of 2014 to develop this programme to help us meet a shortage of much needed skilled tradesmen across the UK.

“Earlier this year we appointed a dedicated ex-military resettlement specialist, Tommy Watson, to spearhead the programme and we began welcoming the first of our new employees at the start of October.

“We are already on course to bring 500 new people into the business in 2015 and if our growth continues, we will repeat this in 2016.

“The new recruits are all starting on an 18 month training programme with time spent in the classroom and out on site. Our courses welcome new people every four weeks and based on the recruits we’ve already seen we are very excited with the quality of the candidates and some of them I’m sure will go on to take management positions within the business in the future.”

Persimmon currently employs 3500 people across the UK. Alongside trainee bricklayers and joiners, the company is also directly employing other staff with a military background into sales and management roles.