Scarborough’s Construction Skills Village, a centre for bringing education and construction closer together, is undergoing a 12-week relocation and using a new green model to support future eco-friendly housebuilding in the area.

The relocation to the new High Eastfield Farm site is being assisted by apprentices and learners who have been trained to national standards at the skills village, which opened five years ago at Middle Deepdale, reports Yorkshire Coast Radio.

The new site will allow learners and apprentices of all ages to put their joinery, bricklaying and groundwork skills to real practical use in the creation of the green construction skills centre.

The scheme has been backed by Scarborough Council, which is working in partnership with Northern Regeneration, which is the operator of the skills village, to meet the needs of thousands of affordable homes.

The new training facility will provide areas for scaffolding, bricklaying, plastering, joinery, plumbing, heating and electrical training, as well as a range of small start-up units and a lecture/seminar room.

Northern Regeneration is a community interest company that is planning a new wide-ranging curriculum of modern green construction techniques that aim to help meet the urgent needs within housing and construction.

The High Eastfield site will include units to practise trade skills, green skills, plant training areas, enterprise units, offices, a cafe and an exhibition space. The current farm buildings are in varying states of repair, but once the site is fully renovated it will provide facilities over two floors.

Alongside staff from the skills village, local tradespeople and their apprentices, who have offered their skills and expertise, will assist the transition from the old site to the new, which entails the dismantling and transporting of all the wooden structures and low-loading cabins for use until the new buildings are completed.

It will mean a massive expansion for the skills village, which aims to meet the 49,000 construction-related workers required for the region by 2030, and the skilled workers needed to build 9,000 homes that Scarborough urgently needs over the next 10 years.

Graham Ratcliffe, managing director, said: “Coronavirus is obviously still a major issue but we want to look forward to new, brighter developments. Following our most successful apprentice-creation year, we have started on a huge expansion.

Mr Ratcliffe said that the scheme’s partners and sponsors, and well as the backing of Scarborough Council, have been ‘magnificent’ in helping the centre enrol record numbers of learners, in both young people and adults wanting to develop extra skills and advance in a career in construction.

The skills village has created 171 jobs or apprenticeships and 102 learners were directly recruited for their post-16 education, with 62 learners going into employment or apprenticeships in the construction industry last year.

The Construction Skills Village is planning to build attractively-designed stylish homes for affordable rent or sale and using local building suppliers and trade skills.

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