Construction Skills case study

As a developer of new homes with 813 homes on site, and in line with our social purpose we are committed to enabling people within the communities we are working in to benefit from employment and skills training and realise opportunities that will bring them high quality, long term employment. This is also good for the country, helping address the construction skills shortage.

Activity in 2020/21 included:

• Working with both Essex and Thurrock to promote construction employment and training opportunities through their new online training and employment portal and produced our own recruitment film to help attract workers into a career in construction: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4SoGGr9l6TQ • Trialling an MSO Kickstart scheme at the Factory. This allows us to partner up with a training provider, STC, which will train around 7 local residents of 18-24year olds that are unemployed and in receipt of Universal Credit. The trainees complete a threeweek college training course and then come into our factory where they are supervised and trained by us for a maximum of six months. This is currently working well, and we will look to take on more cohorts later in the year.

• In line with our successful Getting Building Funding application to accelerate the fit out of our second modular housing factory we expect the second factory to deliver significant construction skills training outcomes in the long term including assisting 144 new learners into the construction skills sector.

Factory 1