Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to Autumn Budget 2017, what the criteria is for the allocation of the £34 million fund for teaching construction skills.

The department will publish criteria for the fund early next year. The fund will help to build construction training facilities attached to housing developments, and will support adult students to retrain as construction workers. We will welcome bids from colleges and developers from across the country.

The funding for construction skills was announced in the Budget, as part of the National Retraining Scheme. Most of the funding will be a construction skills fund for England, which will support government’s ambition to build new homes during the Parliament.

There will also be £5 million for construction skills in the West Midlands, as part of the second devolution deal.