£22 Million Construction Skills Fund Set Up To Tackle Skills Shortages

£22 Million Construction Skills Fund Set Up To Tackle Skills Shortages

In a bid to tackle the skills shortage in the construction industry head on, a £22 million Construction Skills Fund has been set up to establish new hubs at live construction sites to train up thousands of people.

It’s expected that over 17,000 people will be trained at these hubs across the country, with 26 innovative partnerships set up to help ensure that everyone will be job and site-ready come March 2020.

The winning projects include the likes of Liverpool Waters Construction Hub and the Southwark Construction Skills Centre, committing to training more than 7,000 people and getting them into permanent jobs by the time the programme ends.

Trainees will be able to learn in a real-world construction environment so they can gain the practical skills required in order to secure a career in construction. It’s thought that around 158,000 new construction workers will be required in the UK over the next five years and it’s hoped that this new scheme will help create the skilled workers to meet this particular challenge.

More than 222,000 new homes were delivered between 2017 and 2018, showing that the government is indeed on track to deliver 300,000 new properties each year by the middle of the 2020s.

Damian Hinds, education secretary, commented on the announcement, saying: “It is vital that we have a strong workforce post-Brexit. The Construction Skills Fund will ensure more people gain the skills they need to forge a successful career and help create the skilled workers we need to deliver on our housing ambitions.

“Whether building new homes or contributing to major infrastructure projects to keep our country connected, working in construction means helping to shape Britain in the months and years ahead.”

The increase in housebuilding comes after serious government reforms, including more investment into the Affordable Homes Programme and more streamlined planning rules. A comprehensive programme of targeted investment and planning reform has been devised to ensure the UK continues to build the homes it needs, including removing the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap.

This has meant that councils are now free to deliver a new generation of council housing, up to around 10,000 homes each year.

Kit Malthouse, minister of state for housing, made further comments on the news about the training hubs, saying: “We can’t build the homes our communities need without a dedicated and skilled construction workforce. Our Construction Skills Fund will play a crucial role in training the future labourers required to build more, better and faster homes.”

The fund will also help inform the design of the National Retraining Scheme, which will be supported by £100 million, in a bid to drive adult learning and retraining forms a part of the Industrial Strategy, the plan to build a Britain fit for the future by assisting companies in creating jobs throughout the entire country.

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