About the CITB

About us

CITB is the Industry Training Board for construction sectors in England, Scotland and Wales.

Our role is to engage with, and support the construction industry to invest in people and training.  We ensure that the industry has the high-quality training and infrastructure required to sustain and develop a safe, professional and fully qualified workforce, and a productive and economically successful construction sector across the UK.  We are a partner to government and influence educational policy to ensure it reflects the needs of employers, now and in the future.

Our purpose is to support the construction industry to have a skilled and competent workforce, now and in the future.

Operating at the intersection between industry and government, we have a vital role to play in convening, giving voice to and responding to the views and priorities of the UK construction industry as it continually strives to adapt to change.  This means helping the sector to attract talent and support skills and career development, whilst informing policy in support of a thriving sector and UK economy.

Success for CITB is being recognised by industry as an asset and an ally in ensuring that the skills the industry needs are available where and when they are needed.  Our success depends on our understanding of the needs of the full range of employers in the sector, and our ability to accurately forecast where skills gaps exist or might develop, to take early preventative action.

 

What we aim to do to aid British construction:
  • We target our evidence base around constructive skills needs and resources to develop a world-class workforce for the challenges of today and tomorrow
  • We provide an industry-wide information portal/service to ensure all workers and potential entrants have the most up to date information on the 200+ careers and how to join.
  • We work with industry to provide work experience and work placements and practical routes for people to join construction
  • We work with industry to ensure training standards and qualifications are right for its needs
  • We support Apprenticeships as a key entry route to construction through funding and support to employers
  • We focus investment of the Levy to provide employers with access to quality training they want for their people, when they want it
  • We provide funding for innovation in skills development that develops the workforce and improves performance
  • We provide training directories and competence registers that support access to 250+ training providers and training information to support various schemes and site management
  • We talk and listen to industry to research and survey, to question and analyse so that we can stay ahead of change and respond to the sector’s evolving skills needs.

    Structure and funding

    CITB is a statutory corporate and executive non-departmental public body with responsibility for investing the industry’s Levy, which comes from levy-paying employers, to support delivery of our statutory functions.  We are sponsored by the Department for Education and so are also accountable to government ministers and ultimately Parliament.

    CITB is also a registered charity and we work closely with a range of strategic partners including industry federations and associations, the Construction Leadership Council, the Construction Industry Council (CIC) and government departments including BEIS and MHCLG.

    We have a Head Office based at Peterborough but ways of working have adapted to a more flexible/agile approach post-pandemic. There is a large mobile employer engagement team that operates throughout England, Scotland and Wales.  We also have a significant level of outsourced activity and support services and we run the National Construction College (NCC), with three locations nationwide, that offer state of the art facilities at one of the largest construction training centres of its kind.

    Teams sit under five Directorates, each of which is headed by an Executive Director:

    • Strategy and Policy
    • Customer and Product
    • Legal, Governance and Compliance
    • Finance
    • People 

    Plans and performance

    Our Strategic Plan 2021-25 sets out the key skills challenges for construction and what we will do over the next few years to help address them.

    Each year, we publish our Business Plan to set out our priorities for the year, how we’re going to achieve our long-term and short-term goals, as well as illustrating how these goals and projects support our Strategic Plan for 2021-25.

    To show the progress we’re making against our Business Plan, we publish a quarterly performance report. This details the impact our projects are having on the construction industry and how we’re performing against our targets.

    For England, Scotland and Wales, we also publish annual Nation Plans, which break the Business Plan down into more detail and explain the support we will provide for construction employers in the nations.