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Firstly, welcome to the new CLIK (Construction Labour in Kent) site! Kent is an exciting place to be working in the construction industry during this time of change and significant development activity. We hope you will find the information about some of the key construction projects happening in Kent interesting and inspiring. There are links from this page to show what’s happening in the growth areas of Ashford and Thames Gateway, including key projects both inside and outside these areas.
As you can see, the construction industry in Kent is about much more than building houses – it’s about building Kent’s future! We are here to support you in making Kent a better place to live, work and visit. We believe that construction should be sustainable, which means that it should help raise the quality of life in the local community now while looking responsibly ahead to the future.
Training and employing local people and supporting local businesses is a key feature of a sustainable development strategy. As a major client, we would like to support sustainable development. In Kent today, subcontractors provide many of the jobs on construction sites. We are interested to hear your suggestions and comments about how Kent can become a better place to live, work and visit through your work in the construction industry. We value your feedback, as experienced construction professionals, about how we as a council can better support the Kent construction industry to create maximum benefit for the people of Kent, especially with major regeneration schemes.
The 'Kent Connects' partners including Kent Country Council, Medway and the 12 district councils amongst others spend approximately £1bn per annum on goods and services and provide significant opportunities for business to trade with them.
We recognise that repair and maintenance work continues to be much in demand. Some training providers already offer training courses and work experience to help meet those demands. One example of this is the MHS Homes project. This project aims to create an innovative Building Skills Academy in Medway to allow young people and adults to gain construction skills and qualifications in key trades like:
The centre will also provide careers advice and employment services, and support new businesses by providing advice and workspace for two business start-ups. The project is mainly funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and MHS Homes, working with a variety of organisations including:
We know that the construction industry is a greatly undervalued source
of training and
long-term employment opportunities for disadvantaged communities,
such as those who feel excluded. Social enterprises (businesses trading
with a social purpose) have an increasingly important role in tackling
social exclusion through the construction industry. Social enterprises
like the Groundwork Trust and
Focus to Work offer great opportunities for people to enter the industry
for the first time. Focus to Work’s trainee success rate is an impressively
high 93%, far higher than most other construction training schemes, and
it’s estimated that most trainees go on to find permanent employment
within the industry.
A large proportion of housing capital expenditure is on materials. We are encouraging more sustainable construction techniques within the industry that will lead to less waste and pollution being produced and greater energy efficiency by using locally produced materials.
Through this website, we want to help the local construction supply chain within the county to improve local skills and create job opportunities for local people. A number of organisations within Kent are working to make sure that there is a supply of well-trained people to fill the growing number of construction opportunities within Kent. These include:
One of the great things about the construction industry is the wide range of interesting careers on offer. A particularly useful source of information about recruitment, training and qualifying the workforce is the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) which is aiming to make the industry more accessible for under-represented groups, especially women and people from ethnic-minority backgrounds.
Business Link Kent (BLK) is an easy-to-use business support, advice and information service managed by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). BLK has a database of construction-related companies in Kent and is also doing some interesting work to identify local supply chains in the industry. BLK is managed by business people for business people and, whatever the size of your construction business, BLK can help it to prosper.