CITB supports 30,000 apprentices: funding and skills outlook for UK projects
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
CITB has allocated £120m in 2024/25 grant funding to support 30,837 apprentices and 10,410 construction employers, including 9,258 small and micro businesses. Its Travel to Train grant covered £8.2m of travel and accommodation costs for 3,794 learners and 1,217 employers across England, Scotland and Wales, while qualification grants provided £21.7m to 22,690 learners and 3,088 employers. With CITB’s Construction Workforce Outlook projecting 2.1% annual output growth and a need for 47,000 additional workers per year to 2029, these grants directly target looming skills gaps.
Technical Brief
- Grant covers both transport and accommodation, critical where regional training centres are several hours from worksites.
- Qualification grants extend beyond apprentices, subsidising upskilling and conversion training for existing construction workforce.
- For workforce planning, grants effectively target dispersed SMEs that deliver much of UK site-level construction output.
Our Take
CITB’s grant envelope sits alongside ECITB’s targeted programmes such as the new welding upskilling course and Aurora Energy Services’ ‘Military to Wind’ pathway, suggesting that construction apprenticeships are increasingly being aligned with specialist energy-transition skills rather than traditional trades alone.
Within our 840-item Infrastructure corpus, CITB appears more frequently than most UK skills bodies, and its backing of initiatives like the Get It Right Initiative’s error-reduction training indicates that grant policy is being used not just for headcount growth but to lift productivity and quality on major projects.
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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