Skills for the Future
The Canal & River Trust looks after a 2000-mile network of canals and navigable rivers across the UK. Much of the network is over 200 years old. These important green spaces, free and open to all to visit, require specialist care and maintenance. With an ageing workforce in the heritage sector, we know there is a critical skills gap emerging. By 2020, the trust has identified that 32% of bankside staff will have reached retirement age. The need to recruit more young people - and also people who are representative of the communities it serves - is urgent.
In 2014, we awarded the Canal & River Trust £607k to train 42 individuals in specialist waterway heritage skills as part of a strategy to address these issues. In a well-planned recruitment campaign, they focused on encouraging new entrants to the sector, including black, Asian and minority ethnic candidates and women. Trainees received a bursary during their 12-month traineeships and got hands-on with bricklaying, working with lime, carpentry and stonemasonry. The traineeship programme allowed the trust to assess the young people’s suitability for advancement into an apprenticeship and gave trainees the chance to decide if this was the career for them.
It’s my dream job. This is perfect for me. Nature is what I’m about. I love being outdoors, seeing the seasons change, the canals relying on you and you being part of it. What you are doing feels valuable. I was very lucky – right place, right time. I’m still a bit overwhelmed.”
Hayley Garrod, Skills for the Future trainee
Making a difference
The Waterways Heritage Skills project achieved our skills outcome and ensured a wider range of people were engaged with heritage:
- Advertising the project widely through youth partners, such as The Princes Trust and Shropshire Youth, local colleges and the Trust’s own networks, enabled the Trust to reach a diverse range of people. As a result, 44% of trainees were women or identified as black or minority ethnic.
- The trust used the project to create two new vocational qualifications, bridging the gap between the skills of the operational and contractor workforce and creating a vital new progression pathway to Level 3 qualifications, apprenticeships and the status of master craftsman. The NOCN Level 2 Award and Diploma in Heritage Conservation and Restoration of Britain’s Canals and Waterways brings together theory and practical skills development.
- Identifying progression routes at the start of the project ensured young trainees had positive and realistic next steps available to them. 22 trainees moved on to a higher level craft apprenticeship with the Trust, two additional trainees secured operative roles with the Trust, three were employed elsewhere in the heritage sector and three progressed onto higher education.
Lessons learned
A specific training area was set up at the Heritage Crafts Alliance site in Bedale. This allowed trainees to develop and demonstrate specific skills required for the completion of their vocational qualification, which were not available through the waterway team. One example is space to build a fence to achieve the carpentry element of a portfolio.
A 2-week placement for all trainees with the trust’s contractor, Kier, provided useful exposure to a different working environment and forged contacts with another prospective employer.
The project provided a pipeline of committed and skilled trainees onto the trust’s existing Level 3 apprenticeships. Since the project completed, the Canal & River Trust has reported a less diverse applicant pool to its apprenticeships and is seeking to address this in the longer term.