Polyflor Ltd has partnered with F. Ball and Co. Ltd. to provide free training courses for flooring installation apprentices.
This series of four standalone training courses focuses on floor installation. Each four-day course is aimed primarily at first-year apprentices hired by Polyflor’s numerous flooring contractor customers, with numbers limited to 12 attendees per course.
All four apprentice courses are free of charge and run in partnership with F. Ball and Co. Ltd., known for their flooring adhesives and subfloor preparation products.
The skills-focused initiative was successfully launched this spring at the F. Ball Centre of Excellence in Cheddleton, Staffordshire.
In June 2023, the second course ran at the Polyflor Training Academy in Whitefield, Greater Manchester. The third course returned to Whitefield in September 2023.
The final course will take place in Staffordshire in early 2024, with exact dates to be confirmed imminently.
Chris Landon, head of customer training and installations at Polyflor Ltd, leads the courses alongside Tim Green, head of training at F. Ball and Co. Ltd.
The initiative seeks to help flooring contractors engage with additional construction sector apprentices.
Furthermore, attendees receive an early introduction to products from Polyflor Ltd and F. Ball and Co. Ltd., renowned as established market leaders in the UK.
The training courses aim to address growing labour shortage concerns within the UK construction industry by engaging with future flooring installation professionals from a young age. They also seek to replenish the post-Brexit deficit of contract flooring workers reported by the Contract Flooring Association (CFA).
According to recent data from the Constriction Industry Training Board (CITB), the current skills shortage across the UK construction sector suggests that an extra 217,000 construction workers will be required by 2027.
To further problems, as the CITB classifies flooring as a furnishing trade rather than a construction trade, employers cannot receive funding from them. Consequentially, few technical colleges in the UK operate floor-laying courses as part of their standard curriculum.
Although prospective UK employers can take advantage of the Government’s Apprenticeship Levy, hiring apprentices remains a high cost and significant responsibility for flooring contractors.
Despite such difficulties, there remains a wealth of opportunities for industry-leading companies such as Polyflor to offer internal support, training, and investment, thus ensuring a bright future for all concerned.
“Apprentices will become the lifeblood of our UK contract flooring industry,” said John Buchanan, international technical manager, Polyflor Ltd.
“The apprentices spend two days honing their subfloor preparation skills, followed by two days learning the correct methods of resilient sheet installation.
“As market leaders in the UK flooring industry, Polyflor Ltd and F. Ball and Co. Ltd. wanted to do something positive to help ease the current crisis by supporting those contract flooring customers willing to hire apprentices.”
