Persimmon Homes is launching a recruitment drive to find tradespeople across its 24 businesses as it gears up to build more homes across the UK.

The housebuilder is looking for subcontractors, labour-only subcontractors and direct employees to help the business meet demand from homebuyers.

Since April this year, the business has already taken on 286 trade and apprentice direct employees and this latest campaign is aimed at people who may have left the industry or who are looking for a new career.

As part of its campaign, Persimmon has undertaken research looking at the perceptions of tradespeople among the UK public. Richard Latham, the company’s HR director, has said that although enlightening, the responses do not paint a totally true picture of working in a trade in 2013.

“Our research shows that 78% of people in the UK view the work of tradesmen as skilled, which is extremely positive, but worryingly, 70% don’t feel the job is rewarding and 82% don’t feel it has a competitive salary. In our experience, this is extremely wide of the mark,” Latham said.

He believes that even more worrying is the fact that 48% of people feel that the negative stereotypes surrounding tradesmen stop young people from pursuing a career in the industry.

“Our research found that the majority of people in London (67%), the South East (65%) and West Midlands (62%) think that there are limited jobs available to them, whilst 54% of the North East and 40% of Scots admit that it is extremely hard to find jobs in their local area,” Latham explained.

“Our apprentice campaign is extremely popular and we will soon be kicking off our search for over 100 more young people to join us in 2014. We see young people as the future of our business and we invest both time and money in one of the best training programmes in the industry. Many of our senior personnel, including our current chief executive Jeff Fairburn, started in the industry as an apprentice.”

Steve Roche, Persimmon’s group communications director, added: “Demand for new homes is definitely on the up, partly thanks to the government-led purchase schemes, such as Help to Buy, and also due to the general improvement in the economy.”