Angela Carney, comment piece
The government’s decision to require at least 3% of the workforce on large public construction and infrastructure projects to be apprentices is welcome. So is the move to tighten the definition of a UK-based company, ending the practice of treating a UK post box as sufficient.
Both signal that public spending should support real jobs, real training and genuine UK capability. For a region like the North East, with a significant pipeline of public infrastructure, housing and energy-related work, that signal matters.
But a target is not the same as a place, and a definition is not the same as a viable business case for taking on an apprentice. As ever with these things, the devil is in the detail. We need to see how this will actually be executed: what counts as a “large” project, whether the 3% applies across the full supply chain or only the main contractor, how apprentices are defined and counted, when the requirement starts, and what happens if it is not met. Without that clarity, the policy risks remaining a number on a press release.
In practice, tier 1 contractors will largely pass the responsibility down the supply chain. That is how the industry is structured. The firms that will be asked to hire, train and retain apprentices are the same specialist and SME contractors across the North East that already face the tightest margins, the shortest order books and the least certainty about the work pipeline. A 3% requirement on a major public project does not, by itself, give those firms a clear line of sight on future work, the confidence to commit to multi-year training, or the capacity to absorb the risk if the work slows.
As I have previously highlighted in relation to full-time construction courses and T Levels, the problem is not simply a shortage of young people starting training. North East colleges can attract learners onto construction programmes. What remains scarce is the end of the pipeline: enough employers prepared to offer apprenticeships, and enough willing to host the 45-day industry placements that T Levels require. In our experience, fewer than 20% of learners on full-time construction programmes progress into an apprenticeship in the industry. Many struggle simply to secure the placement days needed to complete the qualification. A new procurement rule does not automatically close that gap.
Even where places do exist, retention is fragile. Apprentices are still lost part-way through to labouring, agency work or roles with large employers outside the sector. When that happens, the company’s investment in training is largely written off. The employer cannot claim the end-point assessment grant, the skills the apprentice has already gained often leave the industry, and the next recruitment cycle starts again from scratch. A target that counts starts rather than sustained completions will do little to address this.
Finding quality young people who actually want to be an apprentice remains difficult as well. The combination of uncertain work pipelines, the practical demands of site-based work, and competition from higher-profile employers, means the industry continues to lose candidates it has invested in attracting and screening.
The 3% requirement and the tighter UK definition are a useful signal for the North East. For them to change outcomes here, we need sight of the detail on how they will be executed, clearer long-term visibility of public work for the regional supply chain, practical support that reaches SMEs rather than stopping at the tier 1, and a system that rewards completion and retention as much as recruitment. Otherwise, we risk more numbers on paper while the same structural barriers that have limited apprenticeship growth in construction remain firmly in place.
The classrooms and the workshops across the North East are ready. The question is whether the firms that actually train the next generation of tradespeople will have the work, the certainty and the support to keep them.
