Skills hub launched to plug industry shortages

Former MP David Blunkett met with students at the new skills hub in Maidstone

A new skills hub designed to tackle shortages in the construction industry has launched in Kent.

About 20 people, including six prisoners on day release, are taking part in a pilot course at the training centre in Maidstone, where they will get relevant qualifications and a guaranteed job interview.

The skills hub is run by companies behind the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) – a new road proposed for beneath the River Thames, which would link Gravesend with Tilbury in Essex.

David Blunkett, skills advisor for the LTC and former MP, said the new hub helped to address the “significant challenges” to economic growth caused by a national shortage of skills.

“If that growth agenda that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have spoken about is to be achieved, it’s precisely major projects like this that will make it possible to achieve [that] change,” he said.

Students will have the chance to learn in real-life and simulated environments

The LTC wants to train plant operators, groundworkers, general operatives, steel fixers, carpenters, site supervisors and engineers, with more training sites planned across Kent and Essex next year.

Katharina Ferguson, supply chain development director for the LTC, said the skills hubs would “help the long-term unemployed into work and give people the tools to access higher skilled and better paid employment”.

“They will also provide local businesses and their staff with the modern construction skills they need to win work on the next generation of low carbon infrastructure projects,” she added.

Those backing the LTC say it will reduce congestion on the Dartford Crossing, while critics say there would be a “huge cost” to the countryside.

Jack Taylor, from the Woodland Trust, said: “We want the government to not allow it to go ahead because of the impact it’s going to have on irreplaceable ancient woodland and tree.

“These are nature’s cathedrals.”