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Over 45,000 new home building workers will be trained by 2019 to help tackle the UK’s housing shortage through a £2.7 million initiative announced by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Home Builders Federation (HBF). The first of its kind, the Home Building Skills Partnership will bring together firms of all sizes to ensure that the industry has the skills it needs to build more homes. This will include initiatives to promote collaboration on skills across the supply chain, so that the industry can better plan for its future needs. The partnership will support over 3,500 construction businesses and, by 2019, train 45,000 new entrants and 1,000 experienced workers with the new home building training qualifications. The housebuilding industry has delivered unprecedented increases in house building over the past two years with the latest figures showing that 181,000 new homes were provided last year, up 25% year on year. The largest companies are increasing their output by 50% since the troughs in the aftermath of the global economic downturn and the industry as a whole is now looking to meet Government ambitions to increase output still further. Experts point out that to maintain high levels of build quality and customer service, it is imperative industry capacity is increased and the new partnership aims to use industry insight to understand skills needs and develop new training and qualifications ideally suited to the modern homebuilding sector. It will create long term skills solutions to meet the government’s target of one million new homes by 2020 and will be overseen by a Board that will be chaired by Redrow chief executive officer John Tutte and include a range of senior industry representatives and CITB. ‘The number of new homes is up 25% in the last year because the country is building again and delivering the homes the nation wants. That’s why the Home Building Skills Partnership is an important initiative and will help deliver the training of skilled workers we need to get the job done and to improve quality across the industry,’ said Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis. ‘Construction offers an exciting and rewarding career and we need to build a new generation of home grown talented, ambitious and highly skilled construction workers,’ he added. Stewart Baseley, HBP executive chairman, pointed out that to enable increased output to deliver the high quality new homes the country needs it is absolutely crucial to build up industry capacity. ‘To allow us to do it is essential we have a clear focus on delivering the training the industry needs. The partnership will enable us to develop targeted training that meets the specific needs of our industry in a structured way so we can grow steadily and sustainably,’ he said. According to Steve Radley, CITB policy director, the major challenges faced by home builders can only be met through new ways of working. ‘Home builders have said they want to work with CITB to anticipate their skill… Taylor Scott International
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