The urgent need to secure funding for the regeneration of the National Construction College (NCC) in Bircham Newton, has moved one step closer after months of negotiations with the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

The NCC presented its proposals to industry at the CITB-ConstructionSkills board on 25 July, based on the delivery of training through a new funding route using the National Skills Academy for Construction (NSAfC) model – and positive discussions with the LSC have indicated that this is a viable option.

Much of the training currently provided at the main NCC site is very specialist, such as heavy plant or tower crane training, and can only effectively be delivered at a national level due to the requirement for specialist buildings and equipment, the limited number of highly skilled trainers, and the need to aggregate demand to create economically viable training group sizes. Under the new proposal, this training would continue to be delivered at Bircham Newton.

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Other training, such as light plant, scaffolding and access systems, and roofing, can more effectively be delivered away from the main NCC site, and under the proposals, would be delivered at a regional or local level. This could either be through smaller regional NCC facilities (some of which already exist with additional locations being investigated) or at a project level on major construction sites.

The core concept of the National Skills Academy for Construction is that training, practice and assessment is delivered on-site, where the highly-fragmented construction supply chain comes together.

This project-based delivery is supported by regional training hubs, which provide training for the major projects in that area.

Under the funding model, this would allow NCC East to act as a residential training facility for the highly specialist training, and also the East hub, with the smaller NCC sites acting as the other regional hubs.

(JM/SP)