Scarborough Construction Skills Village to support a further 50 apprenticeships by the end of the year.

The Scarborough Construction Skills Village in North Yorkshire, which is operated by community interest company Northern Regeneration, currently has 100 apprentices, including bricklayers, joiners, plasterers, plumbers, electricians and groundworkers. It also offers free, fully-funded plant training for people who want to move into more highly-paid employment.It is open to unemployed people or to anyone wanting a career change or to upskill.The training scheme received more than £500,000 from the Scarborough Town Deal under the government's Towns Fund, aimed at the much-vaunted "levelling-up" agenda.The new waves of apprentices aim to help fill the huge skills gaps for house-building and maintenance – and, equally crucially, support the area’s trades people and building companies.By December, the skills village aims to support a further 50 apprenticeships."I am delighted that we are creating real skills for so many people - teenagers as well as adults," said Graham Ratcliffe, head of Northern Regeneration. "Our story is about education and industry working together in real, practical ways."Some of our apprentices could have gone to university, some were working as pot-washers in cafes."They now have the prospect of well-paid jobs for life, building the country's infrastructure - and they look at life differently. They start looking at the design and shape of buildings as they walk about, it's a transformative outlook for them."They are studying with us part of the week, and learning functional maths and English as well as skills from experienced tutors - and at the same time apprenticed to trades people who can then in turn, do more."It is so important to be developing useful skills where there is such a shortage, and by gaining real experience on a working site environment in all weathers, we are providing new careers."The apprentices are based at the construction training site at Middle Deepdale, Musham Bank Road, Eastfield, off the A64, where they learn from experienced trainers and assessors while working alongside qualified tradespeople on local developments.The Construction Skills Village was founded in 2015. It uses local supply chains to help youngsters through apprenticeship and forges relationships with builders and local trades people.Mr Ratcliffe said: "We are keeping skills-learning local. The skills village means that people don't have to travel out of the area. "They like our environment where it's a real learning site not a classroom and they are regarded as working people not students."It’s an exciting time to learn a trade – there is so much demand and great opportunities for people of all ages, earning while learning."

The CITB's Construction Skills Network says the country needs as many as 250,000 more people like these trainees over the next five years to meet the country's needs.