One of the first Sector Skills Agreements was signed in December between CITB-ConstructionSkills and English Heritage. The Agreement offers significantly increased employer commitments to training and skills through their supply chains.

The objective is to work in partnership with further and higher education and government agencies to respond to the key skills challenges revealed by research and industry consultation.

Fewer than 80,000 trades people in the UK are skilled in traditional building crafts, says the CITB. This represents around 4% of the people working in construction. Yet 30% of the country\'s housing stock pre-dates 1919, there are 1,500 Grade I and Grade II* listed buildings on the English Heritage Buildings at Risk register and the value of the repair and maintenance of the nation\'s building stock (including historic buildings) is estimated to be at least 50% of all construction-related activity each year.

The Sector Skills Agreement aims to build on the achievements of the National Heritage Training Group (NHTG) established in 2003 and the existing Memorandum of Agreement between CITB-ConstructionSkills and English Heritage that addresses labour and skills shortages in trades vital to built heritage conservation, such as stone slate roofing.

The Sector Skills Agreement commits CITB-ConstructionSkills and English Heritage to:

assembling a tailored national and regional strategy to support training, knowledge and skills provision quantifying and validating the scope and size of the specialist labour and skills needs for the next three to five years co-ordinating the provision of specialist conservation training, including NVQ 3 conservation units in construction apprenticeships; lobbying for the establishment of targeted national specialist Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs); and Adult Apprenticeship funding to attract career changers into the sector establishing pre-tender training and qualification requirements for grant-aided work, including a 100% CSCS-carded workforce developing and delivering recruitment campaigns for targeted crafts.

Peter Lobban, chief executive of CITB-ConstructionSkills said: "We see this as an important part of tackling future and existing skills gaps while continuing our aim of a fully-qualified construction workforce by 2010."