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SKILLED craftsmen are desperately needed to maintain north Essex's 14,000 heritage buildings.

Two national reports have found a severe shortage in the traditional craft skills needed to repair pre-1919 buildings across the country, despite an effort in the last three years to boost skills in this field.

In 2005, the National Heritage Training Group (NHTG) announced a national shortage of 6,590 professionals skilled in traditional building crafts.

In its report, The Traditional Building Craft Skills in England, backed by ConstructionSkills and English Heritage, the NHTG said only 36 per cent of contractors are working on pre-1919 buildings. Although the shortfall has reduced by 3,000 since 2005, most new entrants need additional training, and two thirds of the work is being done by people without the right skills.

Greg Luton, east of England director of conservation at English Heritage, said: "We may be reversing a trend but clearly there is still a lot to do to make sure the quality of work is maintained.

"These skills issues affect not just listed buildings, but the whole swathe of undesignated and locally important heritage and conservation areas that form an integral part of the historic environment."

The second report, the Built Heritage Sector Professionals, is a study which assessed the training of architects, engineers, surveyors and conservation officers.

It found that of the half a million professionals in these sectors, only 507 are building conservation-accredited, highlighting that new recruits are ill-equipped to replace experienced counterparts.

generation Nearly half of contractors in the NHTG study said they had problems recruiting workers with traditional building skills, with carpentry the hardest trade to recruit for.

But Tony Curtis, of Curtis Carpentry in Colchester, who has been in the industry for 35 years, said the problem is not finding carpenters, but finding ones prepared to work on old buildings.

"Older carpenters don't mind working on old buildings, but the young generation want to get stuck in and earn more money than carpenters used to. The rate of pay would need to be enhanced to attract a younger generation to traditional skills," he said.

NHTG is investing £1 million to reduce the skills gap further, and Essex County Council recently introduced new bursaries for businesses that can't afford training in traditional crafts.

l Essex County Council runs workshops across Essex each year to boost skills. A timber frame repairs course begins tomorrow and runs for the next few months. For more information call 01245 437672.

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