CITB increases apprentice support: capacity and skills outlook for UK projects
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
CITB’s New Entrant Support Team (NEST) helped 5,913 apprentices join the construction industry in 2025/26, a 43% increase on the previous year, by providing hands-on support with recruitment, grants, funding access and mentoring. NEST also engaged with 20,579 employers on apprenticeship requirements, up 6,559 (47%), signalling wider contractor uptake of structured entry routes. With CITB’s Construction Workforce Outlook forecasting a need for over 47,000 additional workers per year to 2029, these volumes remain modest relative to projected labour demand on major infrastructure and building projects.
Technical Brief
- NEST support explicitly covers recruitment workflows, grant applications, funding access and structured on-the-job mentoring.
- CITB positions NEST as a single interface for employers navigating multiple apprenticeship funding streams and schemes.
- Hands-on mentoring support is aimed at improving apprentice retention, not just initial site placement.
- Employer engagement is framed around defining apprenticeship role requirements before recruitment, reducing mismatches on technical skills.
- CITB links NEST directly to delivering a “sustainable and resilient” workforce pipeline for long-duration programmes.
Our Take
CITB’s move aligns with ECITB’s recent welding upskilling and Aurora’s ‘Military to Wind’ pilot, signalling that UK training bodies are pivoting from generic skills to tightly targeted pipelines for specific labour gaps in infrastructure and energy projects.
Our database shows CITB also ringfencing £11.5m for employer networks in 2026–27, so the reported 47% rise in employer engagement likely reflects a deliberate strategy to pull micro, small and medium-sized UK contractors more actively into structured training routes.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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