Laying the foundations: How construction skills could rebuild Bradford’s workforce

Big changes are on the horizon for Bradford. After decades out of the limelight, our city is finally in the spotlight for all the right reasons. 
 
As we celebrate the rollout of Bradford 2025 City of Culture, other exciting initiatives grow closer. The Bradford City Village development promises to create 1,000 new houses, and the just-announced Southern Gateway Scheme would double our city centre and make it one of the largest regeneration sites in the UK.  

With talk of £4.5 billion transport upgrades and substantial economic and social benefits, this period of renewal will completely transform Bradford. However, add in the government’s target of 1.5 million new homes by the end of this parliament, and we start to see a separation between national agendas and local skills gaps. 
 

Just before the Spring Statement, the Chancellor announced £600 million worth of investment to train up to 60,000 more skilled construction workers. Given the scale of impending capital and infrastructure work in our city alone, this funding is both timely and urgently needed. 

Last week’s Spending Review brought some good news. The Chancellor announced an extra £1.2 billion a year for further education and skills by 2028, including £625 million to train 60,000 new construction workers. 

It’s a positive step, especially for a city like Bradford where those skills are in high demand. But while the headlines are welcome, the reality is more complex. Adult learners, wider apprenticeship routes, and pay for college staff need to continue to be prioritised. They affect our ability to grow, to hire the right people, and to offer places to the many students we’re currently turning away. If we’re serious about regeneration, then the investment in skills must go further – and reach the places that need it most.

 
Bradford College is well oversubscribed for construction courses. We currently receive around four applications for every place available. The sector-wide difficulty of recruiting experienced lecturers (caused by FE’s inability to keep pace with construction salaries) is problematic, but for Bradford College, the real issue is capacity.  
 
As one of the region’s largest further education providers, which has invested over £40 million of funding into aspirational new facilities over the last three years, we are ready to scale our impact even further. With the right capital investment, our ambition is to create a flagship technical excellence college in construction.  
 
Our proposal will be a catalyst for regeneration and produce the skills desperately needed to deliver the government’s social mobility agenda, the transition to net zero, and infrastructure-led economic recovery. More than this, a new technical excellence college in construction will solve another Bradford challenge – large scale under-employment. 

  
Sadly, geography and poverty still dictate life chances and social mobility in the UK. This point was underscored by the recent Sutton Trust ‘opportunities index’ report. Take Bradford South, for example – the patch of deputy speaker Judith Cummins MP.  This area is classified as one of the most disadvantaged in England (ranked 508^th) but is also where we recruit about a third of our 16-18-year-old cohort. 
 
Despite extensive partnership work, 37 per cent of Bradford South’s young people are on free school meals, and only 14.1 per cent of those achieve English and maths passes. Around 12.6 per cent complete a degree by 22, and only 7.4 per cent ever move to a different region by age 28. This is the picture we face as the city’s core community college. 
 
Likewise, although NEET (not in education, employment or training) numbers here are lower than the national average, we also see a huge amount of economic inactivity as soon as young people reach 18. Bradford has the largest cohort of 18 to 24-year-olds claiming universal credit in the UK (11 per cent). These young people are massively behind national achievement rates: nearly -11 per cent at level 2 and -12 per cent at level 3.  

Construction is a West Yorkshire local skills improvement plan (lsip) priority sector and acute skills shortage area. Establishing Bradford College as a technical excellence college would promote high-quality training pathways through to level 3 and support the jobs plan, green skills manifesto and regional growth championed by Tracy Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire. 

In the last year alone, we have opened modern £3.5 million vocational T Level facilities and a state-of-the-art higher education STEM facility called Garden Mills after an extensive £6.9 million refurbishment project. Our £17 million Junction Mills building under construction is also set to become the home of our modern automotive curricula in 2026 – specialising in electric and hybrid vehicles and vital for the growth of regional low-carbon skills capabilities. 

Capital investment in a new technical excellence college in construction would bolster these world-leading facilities and anchor Bradford’s ‘knowledge quarter’, driving a more diverse, future-ready workforce. With our construction results already surpassing national averages by 9 per cent, we’re ready to act at pace and help shape the city’s next chapter. 

Chris Webb, CEO and Principal, Bradford College