Investment in skills is critical to our business to reduce the skills gaps we may have in the future. There is currently a shortfall of around 20,000 qualified engineers in the UK. Our apprenticeship programme is enabling us to reduce our reliance on external recruitment for the majority of roles that do arise.

The manufacturing apprenticeship programme is structured to ensure every apprentice completes the in-depth 8-week classroom activities which covers an Engineering Technical qualification which is tailored to our products and our quality processes.

During the 8 weeks, they are deployed into the factory to complete additional training and assessment on different lines and it includes welding.

Once they have completed this training they then ‘graduate’ from the academy and go onto the shop floor to continue their training and to be assessed until they achieve a level 2 qualification.