One of the UK’s largest industries
has called for a fair share of the £6bn annual budget of the new Learning and
Skills Council in order to prevent future skills shortages.
The Construction
Industry Training Board has published a workforce development document, which
highlights the skill requirements of the 370,000 recruits needed by the sector
over the next five years.
It believes there has
been an overemphasis on courses that are cost-effective for colleges to run but
bear little relation to the demand for skills in their catchment areas.
CITB chairman Hugh Try
will be meeting with the LSC’s chairman Bryan Sanderson on 26 April to discuss
his concerns.
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Try said, "We
have great hopes that the LSC will take a wholly fresh, strategic approach to
training at both a national and regional level. We’re offering it the
information, ideas and insight it needs to help our industry recruit and
upskill hundreds of thousands of people.
"We must develop
our partnership with the LSC effectively or else in a few years’ time not only
the construction industry but the UK economy as a whole will suffer terribly
from the results of severe skills shortages."
