TRAINING
Don’t scrap the levy!
Scrapping the Apprenticeship Levy is not the answer to the industry’s skills problem, says Tony Howard, director of BESA Training.
T
he UK has a plentiful supply of hairdressers, nail technicians and baristas – but we haven’t got enough pipefitters. Why?
There are skills shortages across most construction trades and at all levels, largely because training funding fell off a cliff after the financial crash. Today, the UK is languishing in 17th place in the investment league table of developed economies. The construction workforce as a whole has shrunk by 15% since 2008.
Construction firms want to grow and invest, but they are not sure how to plan for the future. Brexit, clearly, is not helping, but that is not the only factor. A general lack
new airports, we spend 20 years debating one runway. This kind of dithering does not just frustrate the business community – it directly affects strategies for recruitment and skills.
The Hackitt Review is also important. It called for ‘radical culture change’ – a new way of working, a new focus on competence, and new climate of compliance. To an outsider looking in, the issues seem obvious: if you do not have enough people who know what they are doing, train them up. Even Prince William has added his weight to this argument.
of investment confidence in our industry has created a skills gap that is starting to look more like a chasm.
The government’s much vaunted ‘infrastructure pipeline’ is crucial because it can change the nature of how our industry works and this, in turn, will fire investment in recruitment and skills. That is why projects like the planned third runway at Heathrow matters. While China builds 70
Yet, there was 25% fall in apprenticeship starts this year, despite the government making this a priority area and planning to create three million new apprentices by 2020 via its Apprenticeship Levy.
Some business leaders – including the CBI – have lost patience and have called for the Levy to be scrapped. Many SMEs said they were struggling to access the funding and that much of the training on offer by the 2,500 recognised providers was not fit for purpose. However, the policy is more or less right. It is the implementation that needs sorting out. We should be prepared to give the Department for Education (DfE) the benefit of the doubt and see how the figures look in November, but the bigger problem is that too many training providers still deliver courses that are
44 August 2018
www.acr-news.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
