Apprenticeships

Maximising Community Benefit From Construction

CHA were selected to be North Ayrshire Council’s lead developer on the prestigious £32m Vineburgh Regeneration project in March 2007. The Vineburgh redevelopment will see 259 new homes built by CHA over 3 Phases. Our commitment to maximise training and employment opportunities for local residents and to develop other community regeneration initiatives was key to this award.

 Phase 1 of the development – involving the construction of 82 units - went out to tender in January 2009. All pricing contractors were required to submit community benefit method statements as part of their tender submissions. These sought contractors proposals on how they, working with employability and training agencies, would target recruitment of up to 15% of their labour requirement for the site on unemployed residents via apprenticeships and other job opportunities.

We also expressed a preference for contractors to sub-contract an element of the fencing and ground works to a ‘train and build’ organisation to deliver to ensure that more unskilled general building operative opportunities were also created.

Ashleigh Scotland were awarded the contract and presented impressive targeted recruitment and training proposals. Phase 1 has seen the following training and emploment outcomes achieved :-

• 10 full apprenticeships and 2 ground worker jobs offered by Ashleigh and their subcontractors
• 6 additional building operative jobs created via a sub-contract between Ashleigh and the Wise Group, the leading employability social enterprise.

Funding support sourced by CHA for our Vineburgh Construction Apprenticeship Programme was provided by North Ayrshire Community Planning Partnership and the 2007-2013 Lowlands Scotland ESF Programme.

Following the success of this initiative CHA will roll-out this approach to securing community benefit from procurement to future construction contracts.

Further information on the Vineburgh Construction Apprenticeship Programme can be obtained from:

Janice Crookston

Community Regeneration Unit

The Michael Lynch Centre for Enterprise

71 Princes Street

Ardrossan

KA22 8DG

Tel 01294 606033