PERSIMMON Homes South Coast has announced a recruitment drive to retrain up to 500 ex-military personnel a year into construction industry jobs.

The housebuilder has announced a recruitment drive to bring ex-military personnel into the business to help fight the skills shortage in the construction industry.

The housebuilder is working with Nordic Focus Training, to retrain the personnel from the Army, Royal Navy and RAF in bricklaying and joinery across its 24 regional businesses in England, Scotland and Wales.

Speaking at the launch of the initiative, group CEO Jeff Fairburn said: “We have worked hard over the course of 2014 to develop this programme to help us meet a shortage of much-needed skilled tradesmen across the UK.

“Earlier this year we appointed dedicated ex-military resettlement specialist Tommy Watson to spearhead the programme and we began welcoming the first of our new employees at the start of October.

“We are already on course to bring these 500 new people into the business in 2015 and, if our growth continues, we will repeat this in 2016.

“The new recruits are all starting on an 18-month training programme with time spent in the classroom and out on site. Our courses welcome new people every four weeks and, based on the recruits we’ve seen already, we are very excited with the quality of the candidates and some of them I’m sure will go on to take up management positions within the business in the future.”

Persimmon currently employs 3,500 people across the UK. Alongside trainee bricklayers and joiners, the company is also directly employing other staff with a military background into sales and management roles.

In 2013, Persimmon signed the Armed Forces Corporate Covenant and all new trainees will be encouraged to be reservists.

The builder has developments across the south coast region, including sites in Portsmouth, Arundel, Horndean, Alton, Andover, Tidworth, Shaftesbury and Wimborne Minster.

To find out more visit persimmonjobs.com and click on working with us. All jobs for service leavers are listed at ctp.org.uk.