Specialist Upskilling Fund: CITB picks who will back training for your trade

If you run a roofing, dry lining, shopfitting or heritage business, CITB has named the organisation that will help employers like you with specialist training and NVQs through its Specialist Upskilling Fund. There is one for each specialism on its list, with civils split between England and Wales and Scotland, and the full list is below.

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) announced the awards on 28 September 2026. The fund was designed to help remove barriers to training in specialist trades such as roofing, plant hire and heritage. Julia Stevens, its Director of Industry Delivery, said the aim was to make support available to construction employers to develop their businesses and train their teams.

If you keep an eye on grants and schemes for trade employers, this one goes on the list as a name to follow, not yet as money you can claim.

Each trade on the list has one named organisation

Specialism	Selected organisation
Civils, infrastructure and highways (England and Wales)	Jones HSEPM Ltd
Civils, infrastructure and highways (Scotland)	Scottish Civils Training Group (SCTG)
Fit out, dry lining and plastering	Finishes and Interiors Sector (FIS)
Heritage, including stone masonry and oak framing	CraftGate
Plant hire	Hire Association Europe (HAE)
RMI and retrofit	Dry Lining and Plastering Training Forum
Roofing	SIMIAN
Shopfitting	National Association of Shopfitters (NAS)
Tunnelling and drilling	TunnelSkills
Wood occupations	British Woodworking Federation (BWF)
Other	Contract Flooring Association (CFA)

The Contract Flooring Association sits under “Other”, which is CITB’s own label.

Specialist Upskilling Fund support is meant to reach employers through these bodies

CITB says each organisation will help employers access “high-quality, cost-effective competence training” and support the uptake of sector-specific NVQs. The work is meant to tackle recognised shortages in areas such as heritage crafts and retrofit, two corners of the wider skills shortage in UK construction.

For your business, the useful match is between the skills your staff need and the specialism on the list. The selected bodies will begin delivering training support and guidance to employers in their sectors.

What CITB has not published yet is the part you would act on: courses, dates, who can take part, whether you need to be CITB-registered and what it costs. It has not said how much each organisation got, either, or which regions the work covers outside civils. Until those details appear, the list tells you who to watch. In the meantime, the routes in our guide to government funding for construction training are still the ones you can plan with.

CITB points employers to its Funded Projects Library for more detail. If you already belong to the body named for your trade, you have someone to ask before the details are published.