Nikki Davis, CEO and principal of Leeds College of Building, has responded to the chancellor’s announcement regarding £600m worth of new investment in construction skills.
We welcome the announcement made by the Chancellor that £600m worth of investment is being made available to train up to 60,000 more skilled construction workers. Without this, government priorities such as house building, retrofit, or mass transit would likely be stalled.
The news, which came just ahead of the Spring Statement, commits to delivering well-paid jobs across the country in the construction sector. These roles are urgently needed to build a target of 1.5m homes by the end of this Parliament and are part of a skilled workforce that will help drive economic growth.
Construction employs 2.15 million people, but more than a third are now over 50 years old. The latest Office for National Statistics figures show that there are over 35,000 job vacancies in the industry, with many due to a lack of required skills – the highest rate of any sector. Demand is only expected to increase further.
FE colleges, such as Leeds College of Building, are instrumental in meeting these training demands, and we are ready to meet the challenge. Although we are doing much already with limited resources, we urgently need this funding to tackle critical shortages and ensure a skills bottleneck is averted.
After years of campaigning on this issue, we are delighted that the skills crisis in construction and the built environment is being taken seriously, and I look forward to reading the details of the plans.
