What action was taken?
A period of significant infrastructural investment (more than £3.5 billion over the next decade) began in Sheffield in 2000. Meanwhile the British construction industry’s workforce was shrinking, due to a lack of new recruits and aging of the existing workforce. There was a clear demand for new trainees.
The UK has a
shortage of British
construction workers
The Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council issued a challenge to
the Council’s Employment Unit: to ensure that this public investment
created sustainable jobs for the local population, with a particular
focus on hard-to-reach individuals.
The Employment Unit spent the next five years exploring and piloting innovative employment projects which worked with construction companies, local communities and training providers to engage with and train individuals.
The lessons learned from this project and others fed into the development of Construction JOBMatch, a 2-year employment and training programme targeting the long-term unemployed and hard-to-reach. These include ethnic minorities, women, people who might not consider working in construction, and people that have specific barriers such as a criminal record or disability that prevents them entering the industry without assistance. It involves 109 trainees and is running from April 2005 to Summer 2007.
What were the outcomes?
87 trainees, 80% of the original intake, remain on the programme after one year. The average retention rate for similar programmes is normally much lower. Of these 87 trainees, the situation as of 1st January 2007 was:
• 100% of them have achieved their Construction Skills Certification Scheme card, the basic requirement for a job in the industry
• 25 have already gained their NVQ Level 2 within the first year of the programme (all were forecast to take the full 2 years to achieve this). 80% are on track to achieve the qualification
• 8% are women, compared to an average of 1% in construction nationally
The scheme has
been successful in
recruiting women
into construction
• 30% are from black and ethnic minorities, as opposed to an average of 5.4% in construction nationally
• Over 50% come from the city’s most deprived areas
• Over 60% are aged 25 or over.
Building on success
In October 2006 the Construction JOBMatch programme was rolled out across 3 other local authorities in the sub-region, and renamed Construction JOBMatch South Yorkshire. It is now a £14 million programme to recruit 500 adults to be trained in a construction trade.
The 500 recruits, 250 in Sheffield and 125 each in Rotherham and Doncaster, will spend two years in full employment with a construction company, working towards at least an NVQ Level 2 qualification in a trade such as plumbing, plastering, joinery and roofing. Many will be employed by the construction partners of Sheffield Homes and its equivalents in Rotherham and Doncaster.
Topics associated with this project
Economy, Training, Yorkshire and Humber