WEBVTT

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The UK is potentially on
the brink of its

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largest capital investment
uplift in 75 years.

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The push for growth, the energy transition,

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as well as historic underinvestment

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in the UK, mean that
between 700 and 900

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billion pounds could be
invested in areas
such as energy,

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water, and transport over
the next five years.

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This would be a two to three
times uplift over what has been spent in the past

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five years.

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In many ways, this is a huge opportunity for the UK.

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All this investment is
desperately needed.

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But one challenge that very few people are talking about is whether the UK supply

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chains have the speed and scale
to actually respond to this properly.

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And at the moment,
the answer is no.

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There are three key
reasons for this.

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First, capabilities.

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The UK simply doesn't
have the number

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of skilled workers
to meet this level of demand.

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Just take the fact
that over the past

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20 years, the number of welders
employed in the UK has declined by 40%.

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Then there's the issue of complexity.

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Over the next five years,
we're expecting to see a much higher

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share of large projects,
which are inherently more complex.

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And then finally,
there's a capacity issue.

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This is not a case of one or two sectors seeing a large capital investment

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uplift, but eight or nine
and all these sectors draw

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in the same pool of
skills and resources,

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which in turn further exacerbates
the existing shortages.

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This all means that announcing projects is the easy part.

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Between 2010 and 2015,

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37% of all the projects that were announced never got completed.

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The challenges that hinder project
development are very well known,

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but unless we get on top of them,

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we're never going to meet our investment ambitions.

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Thankfully, these problems are not insurmountable,

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but it does require the public and private sectors to act and to do so together.

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Our report sets out
four key areas for urgent action

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to smooth demand and strengthen the UK’s supply chains.