Industry reveals a keen appetite for apprentices Words: Chris Druce
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ROAD TRANSPORT businesses in England rose to the apprentice challenge last year, with the latest available figures recording a 29% leap year-on-year, Skills for Logistics (Sit) has revealed.
Ahead of National Apprenticeship Week (11-15 March), official data for England shows 15,670 logistics-related apprenticeships started in the 2011/12 period, compared with 12,710 for 2010/2011.
Mick Jackson, chief executive of Sit, said: "This significant increase is great news for the logistics sector because it clearly demonstrates that we are successfully attracting greater numbers of younger people into our industry."
More than 90% of apprenticeship certificates are given out for driving goods vehicles and warehousing (there are nine related apprenticeship routes available, see box for full list).
To date, in England 29,045 intermediate certificates and 4,129 advanced certificates have been issued. The figure for starts/completions is slightly skewed, as different apprenticeships will have differing durations and therefore different start and finish dates. A recent online poll by CM found nearly 25% of drivers weren't planning to finish their Driver CPC hours by the September 2014 deadline, which suggests that attracting young talent into the industry has never been more important.