The 2025 ECITB National Forum today reflected on a good year in 2024 before sharing this year’s priorities and a call to industry to feed into a new strategy to shape skills for the next five years.
More than 230 people from engineering construction industry (ECI) employers, training providers and other stakeholders attended the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board’s (ECITB) annual, virtual forum.
ECITB Chief Executive Andrew Hockey highlighted that 2025 is the final year of our current strategy and the work to develop the next ECITB strategy.
“We want to ensure the new strategy reflects the needs of employers and the wider industry.
“It will look to address many of the structural skills challenges highlighted by the ITB Review, which was published last month.
“The ITB Review stressed the vital need for the work of the Industrial Training Boards within the construction and engineering construction industries and concluded the role of the ITBs should be strengthened, calling on them to do more.
“The Government has asked the ECITB and CITB to work more closely together on areas such as strategic skills planning for major infrastructure projects, increasing the number of trainers, clean energy jobs and skills passporting. Our new strategy will reflect these elements.”
Andrew Hockey
ECITB Chief Executive
Highlights of 2024
Andrew shared the highlights of 2024 linked to the current strategy’s three pillars of Foundations; Growing a skilled workforce; and Supporting industry in transition.
These included:
- Investing £29.2 million in training grants and new entrant programmes.
- Learning interventions on ECITB products hitting 63,800 against a target of 51,000 including the highest number of CCNSG Safety Passport cards being issued since 2016.
- Completing the 2024 Workforce Census and achieving a record response rate, up from 54% of the ECI workforce covered in 2021 to 78.8%.
- Supporting 2,148 new entrant starts against a target of 1,500.
- Securing £750,000 external or match funding for the ECITB Scholarship and Work Ready programmes.
- Seeing more than 45,000 course completions on our free, online Learning Experience Platform (LXP) by over 23,00 users, which is up 277% on 2023.
- Funding approval for five projects from our investment in Regional Skills Hubs.
- Establishing a strategic skills working group for Sizewell C alongside the CITB.
Pictured: The Work Ready Programme supported learners like Connor Edwards at Pembrokeshire College in 2024.
Andrew added: “2024 was a good year. I was particularly pleased with our performance in the number of ECITB-supported new entrant starts, which was 43% higher than the target of 1,500.
“We met the majority of our key performance indicators. On the whole it is a really positive picture, but we will not rest on our laurels and have plans in place to address areas where we know we need to improve.”
The Forum included a review of the findings of the ECITB Workforce Census and its benefits to industry. The three Census reports – main findings, geographic and sectoral – were launched in January and February this year.
Priorities for 2025
The Forum then heard more on the plans for the year ahead.
Priorities include:
- Delivering the Levy Consultation.
- Using new data from the Census to update the ECITB Labour Forecasting Tool.
- Continuing to roll out ECITB-led new entrant programmes and identifying ways to increase apprenticeship numbers.
- Developing site-based assessment for Connected Competence.
- Delivering initiatives to support trainer volumes, including the ‘Sector Experts into Nuclear’ pilot.
- Delivering the Wind Turbine Cross-Skill Pilot Programme.
Developing the next ECITB Strategy
Alongside these plans, a major focus for the ECITB will be to develop the 2026-2030 strategy.
This will take into consideration what has changed and is likely to change over the next five years within the industrial landscape.
David Nash, ECITB’s Director of Strategy and Policy, said: “The ECITB will be bold in our ambition as part of a strategic approach that will likely be based on the three pillars of delivery, growth and transformation.
“The strategy will provide the framework to develop the generation-defining skills and workforce landscape required for the delivery of critical infrastructure projects, energy security and net zero ambitions.”
He stressed that this is not just the ECITB’s strategy, but the training and development strategy for the whole industry and outlined the external consultation process that will take place in April and May. Insights from employers, training providers, approved centres and clients/asset owners will all feed into the strategy.
More information on the strategy engagement programme, including links to register interest to attend workshops and complete the online survey, will be shared this month.
The new strategy will be published in early September, before the ECITB conducts the Levy Consensus between mid-September and mid-October.
Visit the National Forum page to watch the recording of the event and to view the slides
Working for Industry: Find out more about the work of the ECITB
