CITB and HBF announce £2.7M Home Building Skills Partnership

Over 45,000 new homebuilding workers will be training by 2019 through a £2.7M Home Building Skills Partnership to tackle housing crisis.

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and Home Builders Federation (HBF) have announced that over 45,000 new homebuilding workers will be trained by 2019, to tackle the housing shortage.

It will be overseen by a Board that will be chaired by Redrow CEO John Tutte and include a range of senior industry representatives and CITB.

The Home Building Skills Partnership working with research on their needs from a total of 40 UK home builders, will bring together firms of all sizes to ensure that the industry has the skills it needs to build more homes.

In addition to training 45,000 new homebuilding workers, the partnership will support over 3,500 construction businesses and 1,000 expected workers will have new homebuilding training qualifications.

This will include initiatives to promote collaboration on skills across the supply chains so that the industry can better plan for its future needs.

Initiatives include research led by HBF and employers, to get a better understanding of the barriers faced by the homebuilding sector, and the design and delivery of a new Homebuilding Training and Developmental Needs Analysis tool, which will ensure the right training is delivered so that the sector’s skills needs are met now and in the future.

A framework will also be established that will set a common standard for skills and training in the home and building sector. This will deliver a more relevant and valued curriculum, ensuring the safety and satisfaction of homebuilders and their customers.

Stewart Baseley, Executive Chairman at HBF, says: “The industry has delivered huge increases in supply over the past couple of years. To enable us to continue increasing output, such that we can deliver the high quality new homes the country needs, it is absolutely crucial we 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.”

Steve Radley, Policy Director at CITB, says: “Homebuilding faces major skills challenges and we will only meet them through new ways of working. Homebuilders have said they want to work with CITB to anticipate their skill needs, to get closer to their supply chains and to ensure training provision and qualifications meet their needs.

“The Homebuilding Skills Partnership will deliver the infrastructure, the tools and the funding to meet the industry’s skill needs.  We look forward to playing an active role in the partnership to create the skilled workforce that Homebuilding needs.”

Lastest figures show that 181,000 new homes were provided last year, a rise of 25% year on year, showing that the housebuilding industry has delivered unprecedented increases in building.

Industry capacity must be increased, in order to meet the Governments ambitions to increase output further whilst maintaining high levels of build quality and customer service.

The new partnership will use industry insight to understand skills needs and develop new training that will reflect the modern housebuilding sector, creating long-term skills solutions to meet the government’s target of one million new homes by 2020.

Housing and Planning Minister Brandon Lewis said: “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.

“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.”

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