Skills

The Welsh Government has been urged to overhaul how it promotes and supports apprenticeships after a Senedd committee found persistent barriers to access, a lack of parity with academic routes, and a sharp fall in programme starts. The Welsh Parliament's Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee’s inquiry into apprenticeship pathways…

The shortlist for the CN Workforce Awards 2025 has been unveiled. A total of 138 entries – up 10 per cent on last year’s event – have been chosen across 20 categories, highlighting the quality of submissions this year. “The breadth and depth of this year’s shortlisted entries reflect the…

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has launched a £250,000 pilot scheme to upskill facade installers and supervisors, aiming to boost building remediation works across the UK. The two-year project, awarded to Wigan-based 3B Training, will provide training for more than 100 installers and 24 site supervisors of rainscreen facade…

A collapsed specialist accused of considering lying to a client about the personnel working on a job is set to deny the claim at a trial. FEL Group, which made and installed infrastructure for data centres, went under in June 2022. A month earlier it had issued a High Court…

A region-by-region approach is the best way to tackle the construction industry’s skills shortage, a leading procurement body has said. According to Scape chief executive Mark Robinson, the task of mapping skills to regional needs has been made easier by last week’s publication of the national infrastructure pipeline, which provides…

The UK’s landmark £400m rail testing facility is due to be delayed by five years due to funding issues. The Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) is being constructed at a former opencast mine site in South Wales and is set to be Europe’s first integrated train and rail infrastructure…

Twenty-six people suspected of immigration offences have been arrested during a construction-linked enforcement operation in Smethwick, West Midlands. Home Office teams carried out the raid on 18 June after receiving intelligence that the area was being used as a major collection point for individuals heading to construction jobs. Officers encountered…

Danny Sullivan Group has denied deliberate wrongdoing after Balfour Beatty terminated all its agreements with the labour supply firm over the misclassification of HS2 workers’ employment status. In a statement on Friday (4 July), Balfour Beatty said that an independent investigation had found that Danny Sullivan Group had misinformed it…

Scotland could suffer the loss of “a generation” of electrical workers because of differences in apprenticeship funding, according to a trade body. Select, which represents electrical contractors, made the claim after a 15 per cent increase in funding for English electrical apprenticeships was announced. From 20 July, Installation & Maintenance…

The government’s new towns programme presents a major opportunity to tackle chronic skills shortages in the construction and planning sectors, a Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) boss told Parliamentarians yesterday (1 July). Appearing before the House of Lords Built Environment Committee, Ian Woodcroft, head of policy and government relations at…