How to use training to further development

Partnership-led solutions

This perspective is reflected in respondents’ feedback on the role individual organisations can play – and are already playing – to overcome barriers to further development.

Notably, 44% of respondents identified partnership-led solutions involving multiple sectors as having the greatest potential to address the skills gap.

Forty per cent are reviewing apprenticeships to ensure they appeal to the maximum number of young people possible, and a quarter are offering or promoting short training programmes to enable young people to gain the skills needed by the sector more quickly.

This points to a shared belief that the gap can be addressed meaningfully, and that the sector has an important role to play in driving progress.

There is also a sense that social value is being used to build support for developments. Eighty-three per cent of respondents said their organisation used such arguments to either a large or some extent when planning developments.

That those in the sector are keen to do everything possible to support the creation of more homes is clear, with some organisations developing specific training initiatives and principles to fulfil that aim.

PfP Thrive

1 Centro Place at the PfP headquarters (picture: Places for People)

“We want to be a force for good across the sector”

From the outside, 1 Centro Place looks like a standard office building. Inside, it is anything but. Its three floors contain mock-ups of social homes, training bays for everything from carpentry to air source heat pumps, and state-of-the-art classrooms.

That is because this building, located in Derby in the East Midlands, is the PfP Thrive academy (part of Places for People). It will be the flagship site of a new housing and construction training provider set up by one of the UK’s biggest social landlords.

The impetus was to meet Places for People’s staffing needs. “We’ve been facing a skills shortage that runs across our trades and repairs and maintenance roles for a good five to 10 years,” explains Tom Arey, director of PfP Thrive.

When the time came to apply to the Department for Education for a licence for this new training provider, the focus widened.

“We had the choice to either go for a licence to provide accredited training to our own people only, or one as a main provider. We went for the main provider, because we wanted to share what we’re doing across the sector,” Mr Arey says.

For the past 10 months, Mr Arey has been getting like-minded organisations on board. Around 30 partners are now signed up, meaning they will use PfP Thrive to train their staff.

Apprenticeships will be on offer, as well as short courses. Everything is specifically tailored to the housing sector. That will ensure learners quickly acquire skills valuable to their organisation, but it will hopefully also reduce drop-out rates from trade apprenticeships.

“Forty-nine per cent drop off their two-year programme, and I believe part of that is the way the apprenticeship curriculum is built,” says Mr Arey.

“If a carpentry apprentice went to a local college, they would not be taught how to fit a kitchen until a year-and-a-half into their apprenticeship. I’m not blaming colleges for doing that. Their curriculum is just a lot more set, because they’ve got lots of learners.

“But at Thrive, kitchen-fitting will be the first thing that they learn, because we know that that’s the most valuable thing for the housing sector.”

The plan is to train 100 trades-based apprentices in the first year. For the first eight weeks the positions are open, and they are advertised exclusively to the customers of PfP and its partner social landlords. Particular emphasis is placed on reaching those in groups currently underrepresented in the sector.

It is intended that a further 200 individuals will be trained across the rest of the PfP Thrive offer, “so that’s [Chartered Institute of Housing] qualifications, leadership and management apprenticeships, customer service apprenticeships, or housing apprenticeships”, he says.

Training will be offered at 20 sites across the country, with the first students starting in Derby this autumn.

Mr Arey describes Thrive as “a significant investment” for PfP. “But we’re genuinely doing it to be a force for good. We’re privileged to be a large player within the housing sector, and with that privilege comes, we think, responsibility to help address the skills gap.”

Regeneration Brainery

Regeneration Brainery offers an initial week-long programme to introduce students to opportunities in the housing sector

“We aim to inspire, influence and connect”

A-level student Imani was fascinated by the real estate industry, but she knew of no obvious route into it, given that she wasn’t connected to anyone in the sector.

That changed when her college careers team introduced her to Regeneration Brainery.

“We’re a not-for-profit organisation and we work to give young people from underrepresented and diverse backgrounds access to careers in property and regeneration,” explains Michele Steel, chief executive of Regeneration Brainery.

Founded by the development community in Manchester in 2017, and now operating across the country, Regeneration Brainery offers an initial week-long programme to introduce students to opportunities in the sector.

“We bring in loads of different industry people – architects, engineers, funding and financing, marketing, housing associations, the full spread – to talk about what they do, what their job involves, the great places you can create and the great career you can have,” says Ms Steel.

From there, the organisation arranges related work experience for any student who wants it and then offers continuing networking opportunities.

Since 2017, the organisation has worked with 6,000 young people. As of September 2024, a third of those are in the industry and another 50% are studying for industry-specific qualifications.

Among them is Imani, who later this year will begin a real estate degree apprenticeship at estate agency CBRE.

“If you had told me a year ago that a week with Regeneration Brainery would help me secure a degree apprenticeship, I would not have believed you, but it did. The experience has shaped my future in ways I never expected,” she says.

Clarion Housing Group

“Social value is part of our DNA”

Social value is a term with multiple definitions, but Rudi Nicholls has a concise one.

“For me, it’s the changes people experience from the interventions or opportunities that you create as an organisation, and that move people from one place to a better place.”

Mr Nicholls is senior communities and social impact manager for Latimer, the development arm of Clarion Housing Group. Its social value aims are set out in an overarching strategy whose key themes are “investing in future talent, providing skills and training, creating vibrant and cohesive communities and building healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods”, but interventions are specific to the area.

“We do a local needs assessment for each of the developments and then ringfence a budget [for the social value activities] so we’ve got direct resources,” Mr Nicholls says.

An example of this is a regeneration project in the London borough of Merton that is accompanied by work with Class Of Your Own, an organisation promoting education in skills relevant to construction.

“We’ve partnered with them to ‘adopt’ a secondary school adjacent to the Merton regeneration, and we’re embedding design, engineering and construction qualifications into the curriculum,” says Mr Nicholls.

Plans for a development in Colchester include provision for a £2m construction and skills centre.

Mr Nicholls says the focus on social value comes right from the top of the organisation.

“For an organisation to really deliver social value, you have to have that buy-in from the top level and you have to resource it effectively.

“It’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a business imperative these days. It’s something that organisations need to be delivering on,” he adds.