The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) has launched its Strategic Plan 2025-29, outlining its approach to addressing the construction industry's skills and training needs over the next four years. The plan emphasises collaboration, investment in skills development, and bridging the skills gap to meet future demands.

The plan's core purpose is to support the development of a skilled, competent, and inclusive construction workforce to improve productivity and eliminate the skills gap.

Key objectives include:

• Inspiring and enabling diverse talent: Increasing new entrants through various routes, promoting construction careers to over 5 million potential entrants, and developing engaging materials and campaigns.

• Developing a responsive skills and training system: Simplifying the system, increasing training capacity and capability, developing alternative routes to competence, and ensuring high-quality training.

• Supporting workforce training, development, and retention: Leading the development of industry-agreed competence definitions for all construction occupations, offering flexible funded upskilling options for employers, and enhancing productivity through improved quality control, project management, leadership, and digital skills.

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These objectives align with the UK Government's ambitions for new housing, infrastructure projects, and economic growth. A healthy construction industry is seen as vital to supporting these plans.

CITB will review grant and funding incentives to make recruitment more attractive, invest more resources in attracting and training new entrants through its New Entrant Support Team, and increase training provision capacity and capability. The organisation is also working with the Construction Leadership Council to develop industry-agreed competence definitions.

Building on the successful trial and rollout of its Employer Networks initiative, CITB is giving employers a greater voice in funding decisions and addressing skills needs.

The Strategic Plan allocates significant investment across key areas:

• £554 million for inspiring and enabling new entrants.

• £315 million for workforce training, development, and retention.

• £137 million for developing the skills and training system.

• £143 million for business operations, including grant and levy administration.

Key performance measures include:

• Supporting over 15,000 new entrants through additional routes.

• Achieving a 5% increase in employer confidence in training availability and quality.

• Supporting over 35,000 employers with upskilling and engaging over 5,000 new employers in training.

"Everything we do at CITB is about meeting the skills and training needs of the industry, and this Strategic Plan provides the framework with which we aim to achieve this over the next four years," said Tim Balcon, CEO of CITB. "Since our last Strategic Plan 2021-25, we've supported over 78,000 apprentices, by providing over £188 million in apprenticeship grants. We've also provided over £37 million in funding to support micro and SME employers, the lifeblood of our industry. We've consulted with over 1,000 employers to develop our Strategic Plan 2025–29. It's vital that Levy-registered employers can see this Plan ahead of Consensus – the proposed Levy rates are expected to generate an income of around £239 million per annum over the 2026–29 period. Supplemented by our commercial revenue streams, this will be used to continue supporting construction employers with their skills and training needs. We look forward to working with industry, training providers, and national governments to address their skills and training challenges and ensure the skills and training system is simple and accessible for everyone."