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Property & Construction Team
Property & Construction
We are proud to be the second biggest division within Morgan Hunt, made up of 22 specialist recruitment consultants with over 130 years of combined experience.
As a team our recruitment experts spans disciplines including:
- Property
- Construction
- Estates
- Facilities
- Health & Safety/Fire Safety
- Trades
We also work closely with a diverse portfolio of clients; contractors, consultancies, charities, housing associations, NHS trusts, hospitals, colleges & schools, universities and more.
Hard work is at the core of what we do and we strive for unparalleled knowledge of our markets, as well as the needs of our clients and candidates. We reap the success of this and as a result, the highest biller at Morgan Hunt proudly works within our property services division.
Team members
Team blogs
03 December 2014
The construction industry was one of the first to be hit by global recession.
Construction downsizing can have a major and an immediate effect on; employment, government tax collections, and general confidence among the mass population. As private investors pulled back, the public sector put the plug on funding, leaving many employees; blue and white collar, junior and senior, concerned with job loss. Morgan Hunt Director, Dan Taylor, shares his construction market insights.
During a long period of recession a large volume of the workforce left or moved on and those entering the workplace didn’t see construction as a desirable or stable profession. The latest UK Construction PMI shows the construction industry expanding for the eighth consecutive month. With new optimism among clients, construction companies are looking to invest, not just in housing demand but in private sector infrastructure projects and commercial building work.
Construction jobs
An increase in construction output is good, but challenges will arise in sustaining this if the skills required are in short demand. Fewer candidates in the market have the effect of pushing up salaries, making projects more expensive and more variable to price. A strong demand for skills can put the supply chain under pressure and put projects in financial jeopardy should they fail to meet deadlines.
Competition for skills will be fought in the battlegrounds of who is the; ‘best company to work for’ and ‘best at paying suppliers promptly’. A failure to understand these finer points may result in no ‘man’ on site. There is also a need to improve the image of the UK construction industry and its attractiveness to potential employees. All this however has a positive effect for the candidate as they will have more choice, and better pay and conditions.
Jobs in demand
Experienced people are in short supply across nearly every trade and skill level. The industry is reporting a strong need for quantity surveyors, chartered surveyors, estimators, architects, qualified contracts managers and construction engineers. Two very severe and long recessionary periods in as many generations has simply not brought sufficient numbers of these through the building construction colleges and universities which is now taking its toll but will get worst as the industry picks up into full swing over the coming year.
There has never been a better time to become involved in the building and trades field. For those who are seeking long term jobs and reasonable security, the construction industry appears to be a safe bet. People who trained to do construction during the economic crash were able to take advantage of the fact that many had left the industry. These professionals were exposed to big projects at an early age. With the new projects coming in they will be able to take advantage of the demand for senior members of staff.
What is the future for construction professionals?
Generally the future looks bright for construction workers. Now is the time for companies to improve their employer branding to compete in what will become a candidate driven market. With promises of new construction projects and therefore long term employment opportunities, the industry will lure back some of those who left, but this may not fill the void completely. Employers will need to be more flexible, offer better incentives, think about what their future workforce will look like and be prepared to nurture their talent pool to resemble that vision.
The largest construction project in the UK being Crossrail, and looking further ahead there are prospective construction projects that include; the High Speed 2 (HS2) line and Crossrail 2, all of which will consume large quantities of professional skills, trades and labour.
Morgan Hunt offer a consultative service to help your organisation with their employer branding and to compete for the best talent . For more information email info@morganhunt.co.uk
12 October 2022
Is the repeal of the 2017 and 2021 reforms to the off-payroll working rules as part of last month’s ’Mini Budget’ statement the good news our contractors, employers and agencies wanted? What do you think? Are you ready for a change and do we actually know what the new legislation will mean?
Dave Hedges is a tax partner at Azets and says there is “an absence of fine detail” around how HMRC will manage the transition over the coming months. “While the changes are welcome and have been lobbied for, we are advising clients throughout the engagement chain to tread carefully pending clarification,” he said.
Some questions remain following the chancellor’s announcement that the Off-Payroll Working (OPW) rules are to be repealed from April 6th 2023. There are three main reasons for this:
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Is it really going to happen? Nothing has changed yet and we have a Budget coming up in November, preceded by a government already doing a U-turn on its 45p tax rate plan. The possibility of further U-turns therefore seems significant. Fingers crossed that this promised repeal of the OPW rules goes ahead. But it’s not certain.
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End-clients (both public and private sectors), agencies, umbrella companies, accountants and IR35/OPW advisers are all taking stock and wondering how this could affect their business. And yes, that goes for me too!
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Contractors are realising that unless they have always been outside IR35 and working for ‘small’ companies (not affected by the OPW rules), that their own circumstances are complicated. Notably where the contractor is:
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currently with an umbrella, or
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holding an SDS where the client has stated ‘inside IR35’, or;
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regularly jumping between their PSC and an umbrella company depending on the IR35/OPW assessment.
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At this stage (Q4 2022), nobody knows how the repeal of the OPW rules will work. That’s the unpopular, hard truth. Many commentators are reaching for their crystal balls, with some suggesting that there will be new rules for contractors added onto the IR35 rules of old (2000), such as requiring contractors to complete Status Determination Statements. There’s even the odd whisper that end-clients will continue to determine IR35 status; that blanket bans on using PSCs will continue indefinitely, and that HMRC will declare some sort of ‘amnesty’ on prior SDSs with ‘inside’ results. As interesting as they are, these really are only opinions at this stage and should be taken as nothing more.
So what can we do now? Every part of the contracting chain needs to use this time to analyse the effects on their own businesses and it is vital that all get up to speed with IR35 version one (2000).
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Keep watching the contractor press for developments (the contractor ‘press’ that doesn’t just stick a press release up!).
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Decide what you want to do -- if you could.
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Collect and keep all evidence including SDS outcomes, online IR35 status tool outputs, end-client correspondence, contract review results, and working practices changes/opinions.
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Find out about your personal situation now, to see what the options and (above all else) the risks are, and if a change in your status is feasible.
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Speak to your client and find out what their position may be come April 6th 2023, especially if you are contracting with an organisation that has banned PSCs.
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Take advice from only those that, as impartial as possible, understand all the rules (from 2000 onwards), and ideally those with hands-on experience of successfully defending IR35 HMRC investigations.
This could be great news for professional interim and self employed workers, it could be great news for large private companies and the public sector to attract and retain key skills to help them deliver growth and it could be great news for those involved in the supply of these people. For now, keep up to date, get planning and be ready, April will soon be here…
