Monthly Email News for the Architectural Aluminium Industry

New apprenticeships drop by 
over a quarter – and young workers 
are getting fewer
June 2018

The Government needs to look again at the way the Apprenticeship Levy is working, says to the Federation of Master Builders, following the news that apprenticeship starts fell by over a quarter (28%) in the six months to March.

Commenting on statistics published this week by the Department for Education, Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the FMB, said: “The Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in April 2017 to boost apprenticeship training across all business sectors but so far it seems to be having the opposite effect. Some reforms are obvious and need to be looked at more urgently now. The Government should allow large companies to pass more of their Levy vouchers down through their supply chains if the company itself is not in a position to train apprentices.”

Currently large firms are only permitted to pass 10% of their Levy funds down to their sub-contractors and others in their supply chain. Berry said there needs to be much greater flexibility than this: “In the construction sector, larger firms often do not directly employ on-site tradespeople or directly train apprentices and so there is a real danger this industry and others will continue to fail to take advantage of the Apprenticeship Levy if we can’t change this.”

As well as the pressure on apprenticeships, separate figures out this week show that there are fewer younger workers across the construction industry – and that this is distinctly more marked among UK nationals, causing further concern over the fate of non-UK workers post-Brexit.

New figures from the ONS show that, while the proportion of over 45s in the industry continues to increase, that figure is 47% among UK nationals but only 18% among non-UK.

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