Bicester Conservatives have welcomed plans to open a new Construction Skills College in the town. Unveiled as part of Abingdon and Witney College’s apprenticeship programme, the new site based on Churchill Road will train 100 new apprentices a year in construction and property maintenance alongside traditional trades like plumbing, electrical installation, carpentry, and joinery.
An almost £1 million investment will bring forth the new facility after the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP) secured £934,611 from the Government’s Local Growth Fund. The first cohort of apprentices will start in February 2021 with places available for both school leavers and adult students.
The Construction Skills Centre will contain the type of industry-standard equipment that apprentices will find in the workplace, including a large carpentry workshop, a professional gas centre and electrical training bays.
Bicester Conservatives said: “The new Construction Skills Centre is fantastic news for Bicester as it will broaden the range of accessible opportunities available to local school leavers who want to pursue hands-on, skills-based training. Oxfordshire, and Bicester in particular, are areas of considerable housing and commercial growth so construction skills are in high demand locally. Abingdon and Witney College has an excellent reputation for providing high-quality skills training and it is great that these new apprenticeships will also be open to adult learners looking to retrain.”
