We are JBT, an apprenticeship agency, we have been providing placements with Host employers for those leaving FE with their diplomas, who otherwise would fall of the cliff. This is an extremely challenging task for us as the number of barriers are many and high.

Everyone is working in their own silos.

FE want to hang onto their students for further diploma levels, when in fact they need lengthy, on the job experience.

Host employers do not want the administrative burden of employing PAYE nor getting their students enrolled for their apprenticeship qualification, which is where we come in. But placements are often too short, so we have to try to get further placements for the apprentices to give them time to qualify.

Mostly our placements with host employers are dictated by their obligations under a Section 106 planning permission agreement, this then often comes with the criteria that they are first-time apprentices, and they must live in the borough. This does cause a huge problem when the apprentice’s short 26-week placement ends and the site they could conceivably go to is in another borough.

It is all so darn complex at the coal face when all we want to do is get are employees qualified and to go into sustainable employment in the trade they have worked so hard and long to get into.

“But let’s not forget, we’ve been here before. We should embrace these policies, challenge and inform them where they are lacking, and create a lasting shift that turns words into action. Let’s see what 2025 holds…”

New initiatives, and there have been many, fall over because of the basic lack of quality on the job training placements, where people can gain the necessary experience to qualify in their chosen trade. Learning theory, work shop training and two weeks worth of work experience does not cut it in the construction industry.

At least the conversation is moving from the red herring, the inability to attract to low retention through the lack of work experience.

And “cable-pulled” sounds like a recipe for unreliability. The knicker elastic breaks and the whole system shuts down each time. Light rail is eco+++, and very comfortable/flexible. Later changes to tracks/routes are not complex in engineering terms are they.

What alternatives have been examined? Surely an extension to the W Midland Light Rail would make more sense for example?

Another worrying trend with some local authorities.

Planning permission, Section 106 obligations may include the need for placing apprentices on site. A few years back the penalty for not fulfilling the apprentice quota would be a fine. Because the fine was significantly lower than the cost of an apprentice, builders would pay the fine. Resulting in no apprentice placement and a bit of extra income for the Local authority.

Now the fines are more substantial so it encourages builders to take on the apprentices. However anecdotally, some LAs are placing onerous obligations on the builder, which are not possible to achieve and exacting fines on the missed placements, often with a bloated penalty. This does come across as going too far the other way

There are so many obstacles to getting apprentices on site already, muddying the waters with self serving mechanisms does not help.

As a Flexi-job apprenticeship agency working to get construction apprentices site placements and into college is an increasingly perplexing task. The apprenticeships are longer now and, keeping an apprentice on-site for that length of time is almost impossible.

There must be a better way of getting the remaining 70% of college students into paid apprenticeships and traineeships. At the moment, the colleges get a benefit, the industry gets cheap unqualified labour, but the diploma level students (70%) are wasted.

We are in a real dilemma of targets and costly consultations without any real understanding of how the industry actually works.

In my opinion every building company must have a quota of apprentices on their payroll. The apprentices can be any age and be paid a decent wage. They must be enrolled with a training provider and be given the onsite experience they need for their chosen trade / profession by their employer.

When applying for planning permission the builder concerned can show that they are abiding by the quota system. Local authorities should not be able to decide that the apprentices must be local but should use the builder’s record to see that they are doing the right thing overall.

There obviously must be an external monitoring body, probably aligned to communicating with the apprentices themselves. Money is there but is often not used or wasted. We have the apprenticeship levy, CITB, National Apprenticeship agency, et al.

Denise Brennan