Insights by Maria Sinclair

The Employment Rights Act 2025 is changing how employers across construction, real estate, infrastructure and engineering manage their workforce. Maria Sinclair, Managing Director at Cobalt Recruitment UK, explores the key reforms, implementation timelines and practical steps employers should take to prepare.

One year on, The Great North is moving from ambition to delivery. Explore the region's investment progress, evolving devolution landscape and the skills challenges shaping its future growth.

Maria Sinclair, Managing Director UK at Cobalt Recruitment, explores why the built environment skills gap goes beyond recruitment, examining retention, career awareness, AI, apprenticeships and what the industry can do to build a stronger talent pipeline.

Diversity in the property sector is improving, with gender pay gaps narrowing and greater transparency emerging. However, representation at senior levels, psychological safety and inclusive leadership remain critical to achieving lasting progress across real estate and construction.

Construction News' April long read on the new Construction Skills Mission Board marks a quiet but important shift in how the sector's skills problem is being framed. For hiring leaders, the shift is the story.

Featuring insight from industry leaders at the UK’s leading property developers, housebuilders, REITs, and investment firms, The Development Index 2026 is an all-encompassing appraisal of what’s happening across the development lifecycle now, and what employers and employees within it need to know going into 2026 and beyond.

Read the highlights from the Spotlight on the Skills Gap event that RICS and BE News hosted, where Cobalt was invited to take part in a hackathon to resolve the sector's skills gaps, and MD Maria Sinclair was part of a panel of sector leaders debating the topic.

Held at RICS HQ in Westminster on 27–28 October, the Spotlight on the Skills Gap event, organised by BE News and Hackathons UK on behalf of RICS, will bring together policymakers, professional bodies, and industry experts to explore creative, collaborative ways to close the growing gap in talent across both blue-collar and white-collar professions.   As event sponsors and panel participants, we’re looking forward to making meaningful contributions to the conversation.  

First came the Northern Powerhouse, then the Levelling Up agenda – and now we have The Great North. Here we explore how changes in policies have shaped the built environment, what they'll mean for the sector over the next decade, and what skills are in-demand and where across the property lifecycle as a result of them.

While planning, projects, and partnerships were standout themes of UKREiiF 2025, people emerged as a fourth, equally crucial pillar, as without the right people, progress in any of the other three areas is limited. See the skills most in-demand from our conversations and the talks at UKREiiF 2025.

From large-scale infrastructure to local regeneration schemes, the energy at UKREiiF 2025 reflected a shift in sentiment. See our roundup of how the common themes from it - planning, projects, partnerships and people, will form the backbone of growth in UK real estate over the coming years.

At this year’s UKREiiF, we saw a focus on the development of three key areas: housing, alternative assets, and ESG as a trait running through all areas of the built environment. Find out what this means for recruitment in these spaces.