Why the timber industry's skills gap could hold back the UK's housing revolution

The UK needs 300,000 new homes every year. Timber is widely seen as one of the most promising materials to help meet that target; it’s renewable, lightweight, stores carbon, and increasingly competitive for off-site manufacturing.

So why isn't it being used more?

According to a recent webinar hosted by Timber Development UK, the answer is largely skills. Not the lack of timber, or the lack of ambition, but a persistent gap in technical understanding that is slowing, and in some cases actively preventing, the wider adoption of structural timber in the UK housing sector.

Bridging the gap with targeted training

That gap is now the focus of a major industry initiative. Funded by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB), the Timber Skills in Construction project is developing a programme of short, employer facing training interventions. The goal is to equip construction professionals with the practical knowledge they need to specify, design, and build with timber confidently.

The programme is led by Donaldson Timber Systems - one of the UK's largest timber frame manufacturers – and in partnership with New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), Edinburgh Napier University, Built Environment Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), Timber Development UK and the Structural Timber Association.

Timber in Construction Skills will deliver 15+ fully funded training modules for construction and built environment professionals, apprentices and college students, ranging from introductory learning through to more advanced technical training.

Courses are designed for roles across the built environment with an emphasis on installers through to construction project management.

Understanding wood - starting from first principles

The first webinar focused on understanding timber performance and properties, presented by Wojciech Plowas, a structural engineer specialising in timber and modern methods of construction at Edinburgh Napier University. His intervention, Wood Science Fundamentals, is designed as a five-hour, entry-level learning experience that introduces learners to key concepts relating to timber behaviour, helping them understand not only what timber does, but also why it behaves the way it does.

Early in the session, learners are reminded that timber is a natural material. Its behaviour is closely linked to the way it is formed by nature, and two foundational concepts provide the framework for understanding many of its characteristics. Timber is hygroscopic, it absorbs and releases moisture from the surrounding air. And it is anisotropic, it behaves very differently depending on the direction of the grain. Plowas argues that understanding these two properties underpins many of the design considerations that construction professionals need to appreciate when working with timber. They help explain how and why timber moves or distorts, why grain direction is critical to structural performance, and why, despite some common misconceptions, timber can be designed and used with confidence.

The course is deliberately hands-on. Rather than delivering information through lectures, learners are placed in a project scenario as early stage design specialists advising a client. They handle physical timber samples, conduct moisture measurements over the course of a session, test pieces across and along the grain, and work through practical exercises using props like a bundle of drinking straws - a memorable analogy for why timber is far stronger parallel to the grain than perpendicular to it.

The key message threaded throughout the course is that timber behavior is predictable. Yes, it burns, but charring rates are measurable, and fire resistance can be engineered. Yes, it moves, but that movement follows well understood patterns and can be designed for. Yes, it can decay, but only under specific, avoidable conditions of moisture, temperature, and oxygen. "We know a lot about timber," Plowas explained, "and we know how to account for its behaviour."

Designing with the grain

Peter Smith, a partner at Roderick James Architects and a specialist in timber-framed buildings, provided the architectural perspective, and a reminder that the science Plowas described is embedded, sometimes invisibly, in everyday design decisions.

Oak exported from mainland Europe, he explained, typically arrives green, with high moisture content, because oak is easier to work in that state. As it dries within the completed building, it will shrink and crack.

The design response is to keep the structural frame exposed internally and build the thermal envelope around the outside, so the frame can move freely without compromising airtightness. Offset peg holes in mortise and tenon joints are deliberately misaligned to draw timbers together as they dry; the peg then locks into place as the surrounding wood shrinks around it.

Smith also touched on the increasing use of glulam structures and homegrown C16 timber, a topic that leads neatly into the industry's next challenge.

The case for UK grown timber

Rob McKenna, General Manager at James Jones and Sons, one of the UK's largest sawmills, made a straightforward but forceful point - there is no shortage of UK produced structural timber. What is lacking is the willingness to specify it.

C16, the standard structural strength class for UK grown softwood, is adequate for the vast majority of residential construction applications. Fire performance is identical to C24. And yet, McKenna noted, timber design software often defaults to C24, habit drives specifiers back to familiar grades, and the myth persists that UK graded timber is hard to source. UK sawmills currently have surplus capacity for both production and grading.

The C16 campaign, a collaboration between several major industry players, is working to address these barriers - overspecification, terminology confusion, distribution gaps, and a simple lack of knowledge. "Wherever possible," McKenna concluded, "specify C16. In doing that, you ensure that UK timber can be used in your project."

A sector ready to grow

The picture that emerges from the webinar is of an industry with the raw materials, the processing capacity, the architectural expertise, and now, through the Timber in Construction Skills programme, the educational infrastructure to make a genuine contribution to solving the UK's housing crisis. What it needs is a construction workforce equipped to use it with confidence.

Find out more about The Timber in Construction Skills programme here.