West Midlands skills academy deal announced, but no opening date given

If you run a construction business in the region, the West Midlands skills academy deal aims to give you a bigger say in how construction apprenticeships and local training are planned. So far that is the whole of it: an agreement to build one, with no courses, no start date and nothing your team can apply to yet.

CITB and Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, announced the signing of the memorandum of understanding on 21 September 2026, committing to develop a National Skills Academy for Construction in the region.

For most firms this belongs in your longer-term hiring and apprentice training plans, not this year’s. It is the latest addition to the government funding for construction training aimed at the West Midlands, yet the announcement names the region and little else: no site, no host location and no opening date. It also leaves the practical offer open, which trades it will cover, who will deliver the training, what qualifications staff could gain and how anyone applies.

CITB does mention Parker opening The Skills Centre at City Centre South in Coventry the week before, part of a £450m regeneration project. The announcement does not present that centre as the academy, so do not read the two as the same thing.

West Midlands skills academy plans aim to follow local demand

CITB says the agreement lets the West Midlands Combined Authority analyse live data from building sites across the region to pinpoint skills gaps. The idea is plain enough: training that follows what local employers are actually short of, rather than a fixed national menu.

The partnership sits inside CITB’s national initiative to connect construction training across England, bringing employers closer to training providers and local decision-makers. West Midlands is the second such deal with a mayoral combined authority, after Liverpool City Region.

CITB forecasts that the region needs more than 3,800 extra workers every year for the next five years, and cites an estimated 12,000 extra workers needed over the next three years.

The big recruitment figures are not academy places

Both numbers measure regional recruitment need over different periods, not seats the academy is promising, and they put a local figure on the wider skills shortage in UK construction.

The £75m named in the announcement is a separate, earlier pot. CITB says it is regional construction training money the mayor announced last year, over three years, and not a budget earmarked for this academy.

Put it on the list, keep hiring the way you already do, and look again the day there is a course to send someone on. That is when it starts to matter to you.