A collaboration of unions, training providers and industry bodies connected to the manufacturing industry are calling on the government for a range of measures to save apprenticeships and secure essential skills. Among the measures they have requested a national skills taskforce to be established to coordinate local initiatives and create a national structure to redeploy skilled workers and retrain others facing or living with redundancy, to extend the lifetime of apprenticeship levy funds from 24 to 36 months to maintain levels of apprenticeship opportunities in the sector and provide additional protections for apprentices currently in training to stop them being made redundant and make available modular and short-term training to complete their training.
