In an office block in Nuremberg, southern Germany, Bavarian builders and tradespeople are being lectured on the “vital importance” of tea breaks to British brickies, the difficulty of interpreting British understatement and how to cope with “crazy” UK health and safety laws.
This is one of a series of conferences across the country designed to persuade German builders, carpenters, window makers, plumbers and electricians to move to Britain to exploit its “phenomenal housing boom”.
Ewald Gilbert Denzler, export manager for Bayern Handwerk International (the trade association of 853,000 Bavarians), said he decided to hold the conference after reading about the huge shortage of homes in Britain and the Help to Buy and Green Deal schemes introduced by the government to boost construction of energy-efficient housing.
“There is something quite big going on in the UK … and German builders with their training and expertise are well placed to exploit the opportunity,” Denzler said, as he headed a series of talks designed to introduce Bavarian builders to the British building industry, including a lecture on “tea time” and other cultural differences.
Denzler said the movement of highly skilled German workers to Britain was almost a reversal of the 1980s exodus made famous by Jimmy Nail in the TV series Auf Wiedersehen Pet. “In the past there was a good number of UK companies on construction sites in Germany. Now it is the other way round,” he said.
Denzler said enquiries from tradesmen wanting to move into the British market had more than doubled compared with five years ago, but there are no official records of the number of German building workers or companies that have moved to Britain.
He said trade organisations in northern Germany had reported even greater interest in moving to the UK owing to their closer proximity: “Down here in Bavaria it’s a much longer journey … 10 hours by car, and Ryanair don’t let you carry tools.”
German building firms are particularly attracted by the Green Deal initiative, which the UK government describes as “the most ambitious home improvement programme since the second world war”. The scheme allows households to pay for energy efficiency improvements with no upfront cost.
Rainer Wolf, chief executive of Handwerkskammer für Mittelfranken, the chamber of commerce for skilled crafts in Middle Franconia (Nuremberg and the surrounding area), said: “We are one step ahead of the UK on the road to green energy. Germany plans to make all buildings carbon neutral by 2050. We have more experience, and exporting our energy efficiency experience is going to become big business for Germany.
“Great Britain is a big future market for our companies,” he added.
Most of the firms at the Nuremberg conference are “Mittlestand” (small- and medium-sized enterprises) firms focusing on energy efficient construction. Joachim Russ is sales manager of Haga, a 400-employee facades and windows company based in Nuremberg. He said: “We have a lot of competition in Germany for energy efficient construction; there is less competition in the UK and we could make a lot of money.”
Russ added that Britain had a “very long way to go” to catch up with German window technology. There, “triple glazing is the most common and no one would think about having single glazing like so many British homes”.
Windows are close to the heart of many in southern Germany, where daytime winter temperatures hit 3C at best and often fall into double-digit negatives. When asked what defined Germany for her, Chancellor Angela Merkel replied: “Airtight windows. No other country can build such airtight and beautiful windows.”
Roman Zubiks, a technical draftsman at window company Schindler Roding, has already worked on a project in London’s St James’s Park. He said he wanted his company to employ a permanent team in London because “it’s much more fun than Bavaria” and will save money spent on hiring local contractors.
Margit Kachler, head of exports for the underfloor heating company IVT, said she was “really excited” about the energy efficiency subsidies on offer, which could be “really good for us”. But she’s not keen to head a UK outpost as “London is far too expensive”.
Markus Seifermann, a German architect working in London who lectured the group on the differences between working in Germany and the UK, said Britain was attractive because “obviously at the moment there is a big opportunity”. And, he added: “The atmosphere is a lot more friendly and more relaxed”.
Seifermann, whose company UberRaum was commissioned to refurbish the German embassy in Belgrave Square, said one of the biggest challenges for Germans in Britain was understanding British understatement. “Brits say there is ‘a little bit of an issue’ here, which the Germans may take literally when it’s actually a big problem.”
The initiative to encourage Germany’s craftsmen, who study for at least five years to gain master craftsman certification, is supported by Rudolf Adam, acting German ambassador to London, who has privately complained of the difficulty of finding highly skilled tradespeople in London. “More co-operation between British and German craftsmen is welcome. Building closer ties between young skilled workers would be of benefit to both our countries,” he said.
Adam is also understood to be keen to encourage British tradespeople to study for German master craftsman qualifications. The German Confederation of Skilled Crafts has previously trained Chinese workers in the latest automotive electronics and is considering similar schemes with Britain and other European Union countries.
“We had a project with China, where Chinese students were trained at university and in the workplace for a year and then went back to China,” Wolf said. “That was like a guarantee to never be unemployed and get very well paid for the rest of your life in China because you’ve got this German degree.”
Wolf said Britons could sign up for a similar scheme – but they would have to learn German first.