ITT: Mapping Training and Qualifications for Heritage Construction Trades in England, UID 370

Heritage construction skills are essential for the repair, maintenance, conservation and retrofit of England’s 5.5 million traditional buildings (built pre-1919), but the industry faces significant skills shortages. Complex and patchy provision of relevant training is a major barrier to closing these skills gaps. At present, we have only limited visibility of provision and uptake for construction qualifications which contain heritage content. This project would fill this gap in our knowledge and evidence by establishing a baseline dataset of current provision, funding, participation in, and completion rates of relevant training and qualifications. This will provide a detailed picture of where training is taking place, who is offering the training, and how many people are undertaking it as well as a repeatable methodology enabling this project to be repeated in future. This project will also analyse the data alongside other research to identify where heritage content is included, and where there are gaps in available provision (both geographically and in terms of construction roles), trends over time, and identify qualifications which might be at risk. With this information we will be able to better target our advocacy and interventions to improve education and training provision in this area and maximise our impact at both a national and regional level. This will directly support our work supporting the supply of heritage construction skills and enabling a greater volume of relevant training.