Around 12,000 construction jobs could be lost in Yorkshire this year as the region continues to suffer from a bias of major infrastructure work in the South of England, a new industry report warns today.

Industry training body CITB-ConstructionSkills says the South is enjoying a higher concentration of major infrastructure work than at any time since the Channel Tunnel was built in 1993, driven largely by projects such as Crossrail, Thameslink, M25 widening and the London Gateway port.

In contrast, the largest transport project in Yorkshire, once the current round of A1 improvements are completed this year, is £150 million of works on the M62, near the junctions for Leeds and Bradford.

The report predicts that, although construction employment in Yorkshire will rise by 3.3 per cent to 216,310 in 2016, this year would see a drop of six per cent and the eventual level would still be seven per cent below 2010 employment levels.

The number of civil engineers employed is expected to rise by 18 per cent in 2016, with demand for construction managers expected to grow by 14 per cent, for labourers by 11 per cent and other construction professionals and technical staff by four per cent.

Yorkshire is the only region forecast to experience stagnation in output over the next five years, but is expected to perform better than the North West and West Midlands which will see declining activity – not helped by many mothballed retail and leisure developments which were unlikely to be restarted in Northern regions.

Steve Housden, CITB-ConstructionSkills regional strategy manager, said progress on schemes such as the delayed Westfield shopping mall in Bradford city centre were vital to kick-starting activity. The axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme had also dented construction activity in the district.

Nationally, the report says a further 45,000 construction jobs will be lost this year. Output is set to fall by three per cent and particularly hit the North of England, while growth will be “slow and uneven” for the next five years.

Judy Lowe, deputy chairman of CITB-ConstructionSkills, said public housing could fall by 25 per cent this year, public sector non-housing by 24 per cent, with a ten per cent fall expected next year in both sectors.