Recommendation 15

Again, the Government’s ‘wait and see’ approach to ensuring sufficient numbers of engineers does not reflect the scale of the infrastructure and industry challenge to meet its targets for rolling out nationwide full fibre. The Minister’s assertion that the UK has enough engineers for its current need contradicts what we have been told by industry and is scant reassurance when build rates need to increase four-fold to reach 85% of the country by 2025. We encourage the Government to introduce time-limited visa solutions that enable engineers from the EU to address the industry’s labour needs until such time that these can be met by the domestic workforce.