Asset Skills welcomes apprenticeship announcement

Government measures to fund an extra 35,000 apprentices will benefit the future of the cleaning industry, according to Asset Skills, the Sector Skills Council for cleaning. New plans to invest £140 million to deliver new and additional apprentices nationally in both the public and private sectors have been unveiled.
The Government is already committed to increasing spending on apprentices in the next year to just under £1 billion and the £140 million is in addition to that.
Richard Beamish, chief executive of Asset Skills, said: “We believe the push for apprenticeships will strengthen cleaning in the long term and ensure the industry benefits from an increase in young competent employees. Apprenticeship schemes offer a high quality route into a skilled job and this extra funding will increase the opportunities for on-the-job training in skilled professions.”
Skills secretary John Denham said: “Now more than ever it is important that we give people the real help they need to get and keep jobs. This is an important initiative and is a further signal of our determination to give people the chance to get the practical training they need to get on and to help ensure the country has the skilled workers it needs to benefit from the upturn.”
The additional 35,000 apprentices will work in both the public and private sectors and will be delivered through a range of measures.
This will include using the power of the public sector, as some of the nation's largest employers, to make available new apprenticeships opportunities within a broad range of public sector careers.
The Government will also use the huge leverage available to it through public procurement to promote skills and apprenticeships, and commit to ensuring that all publicly let contracts contain relevant skills training and apprenticeship requirements.
As well as the apprenticeships boost, a new White Paper has announced plans to enable professionals to retrain and gain new skills by trebling the number of Professional and Career Development Loans from 15,000 to 45,000 in the next two years.