CLC Announces New Construction Skills Plan

The Construction Leadership Council (CLC) recently published its 2023 Skills Plan, a collaboration between industries which supports the net zero challenge and aims to get young people into high-skilled, well-paid jobs.

The CLC showcased the construction and built environment industry in the new Skills Plan, sharing what it has to offer and providing solutions to challenges affecting England in the current climate.

The construction industry employs 2.7 million people in the UK, contributing 8% to the economy. However, it faces a skills shortage with an estimated 225,000 more workers required before 2027, according to the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

CLC’s Skills Plan wants to tackle this shortage by focusing on changing the culture, creating more routes into construction, increasing competence, and developing future skills. The CLC intends to meet this demand by training current or future employees, creating career appeal, and encouraging skilled workers to become teachers of those skills.

As part of the Skills Plan, CLC has developed several projects for 2023/24, including:

• Creating a ‘competence approach’ to ensure there is an agreed-upon definition of competence
• Expanding the apprenticeship brokerage service
• Introducing an apprenticeship mentoring standard
• Launching the Career Pathway Hub
• Piloting a scheme that teaches children about careers in construction

Speaking of the new Skills Plan, Adrian Beckingham, CITB Strategy and Policy Director and Co-Chair of CLC People and Skills Network says:

“Construction will be at the forefront of arguably the biggest challenge – supporting the transition to net zero – which makes our industry a career of meaning and value. At the same time, we have a pressing need to attract and support new entrants into the industry. 

This new Skills Plan by CLC will tackle these challenges by creating opportunities to get young people into high-skilled, well-paid jobs, while encouraging workers to adopt modern, green skills across the globe.” 

Dave Randles, Operations Director at SIMIAN says: 

“SIMIAN works tirelessly at encouraging more new entrants into the construction industry, and this ongoing initiative correlates with CLC’s Skills Plan. A career in UK construction can be very rewarding, particularly as SIMIAN, and the industry generally, look for new and innovative ways to develop and train new talent to meet the challenges of achieving a lower carbon economy.”