University or earn while you learn?

These next few days will be decision time for school leavers who received their A-level grades on Thursday.

Those who set their sights on a career in housebuilding will be joining an industry which has never been more in need of home grown talent.

“Build, Build, Build” implored Prime Minister Boris Johnson in June when he announced “the most radical reforms to our planning system since the Second World War, making it easier to build better homes where people want to live”.

One of the largest housebuilding companies in Bucks is Inland Homes.

The firm founded in 2005 now has more than 150 employees at its Beaconsfield head office. Current developments are spread across the south of England.

Edward Cummings, the first apprentice taken on by Inland appears in the video on the company’s website www.inlandhomesplc/about-us/careers.

“Ed is now an assistant site manager and doing very well,” reported Zoe Murzell, managing director of Inland’s PR company this week.

Details for the Beaconsfield firm’s 2020 intake of apprentices will be finalised later this month, she said.

Inland’s comprehensive two year training programme for Level 4 construction management apprentices is designed to provide an overview of the business.

Trainees progress from one department to another, gaining first hand experience of working alongside the variety of professionals necessary to keep a successful housebuilding business at the top of the pack.

Last year’s starting salary for management trainees at Inland Homes was £16,500 a year. Applicants for the scheme needed A-levels at Grade C or above in maths and a science, also Grade 4 or above in English and maths at GCSE.

Like most recruits to the construction industry, Inland trainees go to college one day a week and work for the company the other four days.

The length of time it takes to qualify varies according to the skill set and degree of expertise achieved.

Apprenticeships run by Taylor Wimpey take three to five years to complete depending on the trade. At last count the firm had 634 apprentices working on sites. The number of apprentices, graduates and trainees recruited in 2019 {498} was 126 more than in 2018

The full cost of apprentices’ training and assessment at Barratt Homes and its company David Wilson Homes is borne by the two firms which employ the recruits.

Currently many companies in the construction industry are financially strapped in the wake of the lockdown. In the initial stages of the pandemic building on all sites in England was put on hold.

No-one in management wants the present economic situation to have a detrimental effect on recruits. Their potential needs to be harvested like never before in modern times.

Economies have to be made but not at the expense of losing the level of expertise housebuilding will depend on for increased output.

Jennifer King, one of the directors of the Construction Industry Training Board says training schemes mustn’t be compromised.

Last week the CIOB announced a freeze on pay increases for its 850 employees until 2021. Executives in the organisation have already taken a voluntary 20 per cent pay cut. Others on the staff have reduced their hours with a corresponding reduction in salary. “We need to do all we can with reduced funding to protect apprenticeships,” says the human resources boss.

* On Saturday, a new development of two, three, four and five-bedroom homes will be launched with the usual fanfare in Stoke Mandeville.

Prices for a three bedroom semi start at £430,000 on the development being built by Abbey New Homes.

All newly built properties priced under £600,000 come within the scope of the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. Under this initiative the deposit is cut to five per cent and the Government will lend up to 20 per cent of the purchase price.

Consequently at The Hawthorns you can move into a three bed at the starting price of £430,000 with an up front payment of £21,500 and thanks to the current stamp duty holiday lasting till next March there will be no sales tax to pay. Yippee. You will be up to £10,000 better off.