Is there an IT skills shortage in the UK?

More UK businesses are able to fill IT positions than not – yet a majority agree that the country's suffering from a skills shortage, according to preliminary results of silicon.com's Skills Survey 2005.

Two-thirds of respondents said their businesses were able to fill IT vacancies, while the remaining third said they could not.

Meanwhile, just over half strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement: 'There is a skills shortage.'

Project management and programming languages (such as C variants, Java and XML) are the skills in shortest supply.

Other hard-to-find skills include leadership, knowledge of sector, management of IT systems and web services (such as J2EE and .Net).

So what can organisations do to build up these skills? Focus on training, said respondents.

Approximately 85 per cent said they agreed with the statement: 'Organisations need to devote more time to in-house IT training'.

You can still make your opinions heard by taking the silicon.com Skills Survey 2005 before 26 April.

The preliminary results are based on responses from 1,182 individuals in the UK.