TAUNTON Deane MP Rebecca Pow has pledged her support to a new partnership which will help train, recruit and attract the people needed to build Britain’s homes.

The Home Building Skills Partnership, a joint initiative between the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the Home Builders Federation (HBF), was officially launched at a House of Commons event in London last week.

The partnership will help attract new and experienced workers, provide construction businesses with ways to respond to their skills needs and develop new homebuilding training qualifications.

It comes as the Chancellor Philip Hammond announced in the Autumn Statement an investment of £3.7bn to help build 140,000 new homes.

Ms Pow, who is also a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Housing department, spoke at the reception which was organised by CITB, along with chairman of the partnership, John Tutte, CITB chief executive, Adrian Belton, and Shadow Housing Minister, Ruth Cadbury MP.

She said: “Getting good quality homes built is a crucial issue both in Taunton Deane and across the country, but we need the skills to build them.

"That’s why I’m pleased to see CITB and the HBF working with industry to train people up so we can successfully meet the home building challenge.”

The Home Building Skills Partnership represents an investment of £3.8 million which, over the next four years, will train tens of thousands of new home building workers, retrain and 'upskill' 1,000 experienced home building workers, support 3,500 construction businesses to identify and respond to their training needs and in addition, a separate £1 million fund will provide non-trade graduate training, such as training for sales and marketing staff, across the home building sector.

Adrian Belton, CITB chief executive, said: “We know that home building is a huge issue, both for the construction industry and for people looking to buy homes. We need many more workers in the sector to build more homes, and this partnership will help deliver that.

“We look forward to playing an active role in the partnership to create the skilled workforce that home building needs.”

John Tutte, chairman of the Homebuilding Skills Partnership, said: “The house building industry is totally committed to increasing output and meeting the housing needs of the country. The Partnership will help us attract and train the people we need to deliver more, high quality homes in the coming years.”

Stewart Baseley, executive chairman at HBF, said: “The industry has delivered huge increases in supply over the past couple of years. To enable us to continue increasing output, it is absolutely crucial we build up industry capacity. It is essential we have a clear focus on delivering the training the industry needs.

"The partnership will enable us to develop targeted training that meets the specific needs of our industry in a structured way so we can grow steadily and sustainably.”