Housing association and major new homes developer L&Q is showing the construction industry that starting an apprenticeship is not an opportunity open only to young people.
L&Q and Barking & Dagenham College have just launched their new Construction and Maintenance Skills Centre to coincide with National Apprenticeship week, and there’s a group of tradesmen starting their first apprenticeship at what some might consider to be retirement age.
Steven Roach, 60, Stephen Shortte, 58, and Peter Beardall, 55, are part of a ‘new breed’ of mature apprentices. They are all maintenance technicians employed by L&Q who now have a chance to ‘upskill’ and gain a national multi-skill qualification with Barking & Dagenham College.
The housing association manages over 2,000 properties in Barking & Dagenham alone (of 92,000 across London and the South East, with plans to build another 100,000 over the next ten years) and has been encouraging older employees to consider apprenticeships. This has led to an average age of 45 in this year’s group of students.
Beardall said: “I’m going to be 56 soon, so this training will be useful for me both in the workplace and if things go wrong at home! It also means that I can keep myself active when I retire. I think everyone should give it a go. You are never too old to learn new things, and it can only be beneficial.”
Steven Roach said: “I’d never thought of doing an apprenticeship when I left school, because I just wanted to get out there and earn money and the amount you get paid for doing apprenticeships wasn’t what it is now. Before I came to L&Q, I worked for a long time for a company that got rid of me as I approached old age. Now I’ve been offered the chance to learn skills that will last me for a lifetime. I already had a carpentry qualification, and I’m now learning about plumbing and working with electricity.
“I’m coming up to retirement and my pension won’t be great, so it’s brilliant to know that I will now have the skills to keep on doing bits and pieces on the side.”
Shortte said: “It’s challenging, but also exciting for me because I know there’s an extra qualification for me at the end of it. It gives me more opportunity to move on with within and outside of L&Q which gives me security.”
Barking & Dagenham College is seeing the age of all its apprentices increasing, something which it suggests is the result of the new Apprenticeship Levy requiring businesses with annual wage bills of £3m or more to pay 0.5% of their payroll cost into a training fund, and for the scrapping of an age limit of 24 for apprenticeships in 2017.
The college’s John Lewis commented: “This year alone, 143 of the apprentices we are training – nearly a quarter of them – are aged over 25, which is brilliant. After all, with people having to work for longer before they can retire, being able to get an apprenticeship and start a new career at any age is a great option.”
Director of the L&Q Foundation, Matthew Corbett, added: “We are delighted to offer our employees that chance to learn new skills to help them progress in their careers. Everything we do starts with social purpose, and future-proofing our employees so that they can feel secure is a vital part of this. Talent has no age limit, and we are proud to nurture and develop all of our staff, regardless of what stage of life they are at.”
