Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the shortage of people with rail engineering, environmental and construction skills.

The transport sector faces significant skills challenges driven by a range of factors including an ageing workforce, a lack of diversity, the introduction of new technologies (such as digital signalling in rail) and the sheer scale of our transport investment programme.

The National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) has identified rail skills shortages in signalling and telecommunications, electrification and plant, traction and rolling stock of 10,000 people between 2014 and 2019.

In response to these challenges, in August 2015 this Department appointed Crossrail chair Terry Morgan to develop the Transport Infrastructure Skills Strategy (TISS). The TISS was published in January 2016 and the Strategic Transport Apprenticeship Taskforce (STAT) was launched on 15 April 2016 as an employer-led group to oversee the delivery of the TISS recommendations andto address these skills shortages including through the delivery of 30,000 transport apprenticeships by 2020.

The Taskforce has commissioned NSAR to update skills forecasts for both road and rail. This analysis is expected to be complete by the end of December this year.

The National College for High Speed Rail will provide specialist vocational training to the next generation of engineers working on HS2 and beyond. Over 1,000 students are expected to graduate from the college each year.

Construction of the college is now officially underway and on course to open its doors to students in time for the start of the 2017-18 academic year.

Both the existing UK construction and engineering workforce as well as new entrants, such as apprentices, will benefit from the training that will be provided by the new college. The college will tackle the engineering skills shortage that is one of the industry’s biggest barriers to sustainability, productivity and growth.