Annual Review 2005

A message from the Chairman

At the beginning of 2005 we launched our Sector Skills Agreement (SSA). It provided an industry led blueprint for tackling the current and future skills needs of the construction industry. This came at an important time. The industry is out-performing the economy as a whole and is projected to grow by 2-3% year-on-year. This translates into a requirement for 88,000 new entrants a year.

Increasingly we are using our status as a Sector Skills Council both to influence Government training policy and to gain funding for the industry. While many of our initiatives are now branded as ‘ConstructionSkills’, our SSC name with partners, CITB-ConstructionSkills remains committed to delivering a first class service to all our Levy payers.

Major construction projects like the Thames Gateway regeneration project serve to highlight the great opportunities on offer and also the scale of the challenge which we face. As well as channelling our energy and resources into tackling short-term industry recruitment and training issues, we have also continued to lay the foundations necessary to meet our ongoing SSA commitments of:

Delivering more value

In 2005 we continued to deliver excellent value to the industry. We increased the amount of grant money available to employers and helped a record number of firms claim grants for training. We increased generation of non-levy income, and in 2005 we gave £1.88 back to the industry for every £1 of levy paid – up from £1.79 in 2004.

We also achieved some real results:

• A pilot scheme of ‘Programme-led’ apprenticeships was introduced in England to enable employers who feel unable to support an apprentice through a traditional apprenticeship route, to offer on-site training opportunities to young people currently on full-time construction college courses.
• To encourage more applications to construction degree courses ‘Inspire Scholarships’ were launched.
• Over 30 employers signed up to match fund the scholarships and provide students with work placement opportunities.
• In April 2005 we revised the Construction Health and Safety Test, making it more accessible. Over 220,000 individuals have passed the test since the revision.
• Our Managing Agency had a record number of Apprenticeship Framework achievements, with 54% of young people reaching this goal, an increase from 30% in 2004.
• The number of companies achieving Investors in People exceeded our expectations in 2005, with a 49% increase on 2004 in the number of companies gaining their IiP standard.

Succeeding through partnership

Successful collaboration with all partners on the SSA offers a huge prize – a transformed UK construction industry with a fully-qualified and diverse workforce, and a professional reputation built on successful delivery of construction projects.

My thanks are extended to everybody involved with CITB-ConstructionSkills for their continued support and their enthusiasm for our expanded role as a partner in the Sector Skills Council for Construction.

I am sure that we will build on our successes of 2005 and I look forward to working with our partners to meet the challenges in 2006 and the years ahead.

Sir Michael Latham

Annual Review 2005 1.2mb PDF file