A trade body representing the multi-billion-pound building materials sector says government action on small business support will ‘power up’ its own drive to recruit 15,000 apprentices by 2030.
The Builders Merchants Federation (BMF) has welcomed the announcement from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of a £60m investment designed to generate up to 20,000 more apprenticeships nationwide, alongside changes to the apprenticeship levy and cuts to red tape.
Reforms include fully funded training for people under the age of 21, as well as doubling the amount of unused apprenticeship levy funding that SMEs can transfer to other businesses from 25% to 50%.
According to the BMF, the package of support will provide a boost to its own Apprenticeship Pledge, launched last year with an ambitious target to create 15,000 new roles by 2030.
BMF CEO John Newcomb said: “Today’s announcement is a great step forward for an industry that needs to plug a significant skills gap.
“We launched the BMF Apprenticeship Pledge in a bid to tackle the skills shortages hampering the building industry, to address challenges including an ageing workforce and a severe skills shortage.
“In a sign of the demand for new recruits, 11,464 new apprenticeships places have already been pledged by 22 member companies.
“Apprenticeships are a key route for the development of new talent in our sector.
“Later this year we are launching a major campaign to raise awareness around career opportunities in the building materials supply chain because we really need talented people, including school leavers and people of all ages and from all walks of life, to get involved in areas including the provision of new products to make homes more sustainable and to achieve a lower carbon future.
“Now, with these reforms announced today, we are confident we can achieve our target of securing 15,000 new apprenticeship places by 2030.”
The BMF, which represents 950 merchant and supplier companies with combined sales of more than £44.9bn and employing over 208,000 people, specifically welcomed the changes to the Apprenticeship Levy.
Mr Newcomb added: “We see the changes to the Apprenticeship Levy as having a real impact, which will power up the micro businesses in the industry, including small builders and installers.
“Around 70% of merchants in BMF membership have a turnover of less than £12.5
million, and the reforms will mean that larger Levy paying organisations will be able to transfer up to 50% of their unused apprenticeship levy funding to these SME’s.
“That will be really powerful as we will see merchants being able to support small and micro builders and installers in their supply chain through the sharing of the apprenticeship levy.”
