The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has outlined plans to retain its current level of support for apprenticeships despite Mark Farmer’s review saying some levy money should be diverted.
In its strategic plan for 2025-29 published on Tuesday (25 February), the industry training board pledged to support an extra 15,000 workers into construction by opening up new routes – and said Farmer’s review “echoes our own analysis of the challenges […] of skills and training”.
However, the CITB added that “it is vital […] that we support as many young people as possible who start apprenticeships”. And a spokesperson for the organisation told Construction News that it disagreed with Farmer’s position on apprenticeships.
In his review for the Department of Education (DfE), published last month, Farmer said the work of the CITB and its sister organisation the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) were “too focused on attracting and training new talent, especially via apprenticeships, with levy funds and activity skewed towards this objective”.
Farmer added that a “refocused levy-grant system should have a revised strategic balance between individual employer apprenticeship grants and other non-apprenticeship support”.
However, a spokesperson for the CITB said: “The recommendation to divert CITB investment away from apprenticeship grants is the main thing that we, and the DfE, did not agree with.
“At CITB we believe that, while there is an important opportunity in upskilling the current workforce, we need to maintain our focus on new entrants.
“Apprenticeships remain an important route into the industry and our apprenticeship grants provide an incentive to employers to take on apprentices and offset the considerable commitment made by businesses when taking on and supporting a new entrant.”
The CITB has pledged to work more closely with governments and other stakeholders to address poor retention and completion rates suffered by apprenticeships and further education courses.
Farmer’s key recommendation that the CITB and the ECITB be merged into a single body has already been rebuffed by the DfE, which said it had no plans to carry this out.
The CITB said despite disagreeing with Farmer over apprenticeships, “many of the review’s findings align with the direction we are already taking following our industry consultation in 2023”.
A spokesperson for the body said that some themes in the review “align with our thinking”.
These include the need for a competent workforce, the need to create additional routes into construction to address the skills shortage, and “placing a greater focus on the existing workforce to address the skills shortage”.
The spokesperson added that the CITB also agreed with Farmer on worker retention, the importance of workforce planning and “the effective targeting of funding incentives to achieve the greatest impact on skills gaps and shortages”.
The training board described three key measures of success by 2029: supporting 15,000 new entrants into construction via additional routes; delivering a 5 per cent increase in employer confidence; and providing support for over 35,000 employers with upskilling training.
Its strategic plan is based on the premise that it will spend £243m a year over the next four years. But this requires its proposals for the CITB levy paid by construction companies to be approved during the 2025 consultation process (known as ‘consensus’).
The CITB is proposing to retain the rate at which the levy is paid but increase the exemption threshold so smaller employers are not subject to fiscal drag. Even with this change, the CITB expects its income will increase, with its levy predicted to raise £215m to £222m this financial year.
Construction employers will vote on the proposals for the CITB levy during the consensus process, which lasts from 17 March to 9 May.
For the plans to be approved, more than 50 per cent of likely levy payers must vote in favour of it, and more than 50 per cent of the likely levy payable must be paid by employers supporting the plans.
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Will Ing