Somerset-based Smart Recruitment is developing a sponsored training programme with Bournemouth and Poole College’s construction department in an attempt to ease a chronic skills shortage in the region.

The recruiter says it has been providing local employers with temporary staff from the North of England and Scotland because of an acute shortage of skilled staff in the region.

Smart Recruitment director Helen Stacey says the problem is the result of new housing and business ventures in Poole, but a lack of affordable housing is depriving the area of local labour. "It has reached such a level that it is now economically viable for temporary staff, particularly blue collar workers who can earn in excess £9 an hour plus overtime, to fly into Bournemouth airport from the North of England and even Scotland, to work here during the week and then go home at weekends,” Stacey says.