Who should register with CITB?

Under the Industrial Training Act 1982 and consequent Levy Orders, CITB must raise a levy assessment on all employers in the construction industry. However, the construction industry for our purposes may differ significantly from what you imagine it to be. The activities of the construction industry are set out below.

You are "engaged wholly or mainly in construction industry activities" when construction activities take up more than half of your total employees’ time (including subcontractors). If that is the case, you need to register your business with CITB and complete an annual Levy Return so that we can carry out a levy assessment.

What is an employer? 

For the purposes of the CITB levy, an employer is a person or a company with one or more employees, including staff on the payroll and subcontractors.

What is an employee?

"Employee" is defined in the Industrial Training Act 1982 as including "a person engaged under a contract for services".  This means that in addition to direct employees on the payroll, engaged under contracts of service, it includes subcontractors (be they individuals, firms or limited companies) engaged under contracts for services.

What is a construction industry activity?

You can find a full list of construction activities in Schedule 1 paragraph 1 of the Industrial Training (Construction Board) Order 1964 (Amendment) Order 1992 ("Scope Order"). Specific exclusions are listed at paragraph 2.

The following activities are construction activities for CITB Levy purposes.  This list is not exhaustive:

• Access flooring
• Alteration to a building or part of a building
• Architectural steelwork installation
• Artexing
• Asbestos removal
• Asphalt and tar spraying
• Bricklaying and pointing
• Building and civil engineering
• Building repair and maintenance
• Cavity wall insulation, draught proofing or loft insulation
• Chimney lining
• Civil engineering
• Concrete flooring
• Concrete repair
• Conservatories
• Construction labour agency / payroll provider
• Curtain walling / structural glazing
• Damp proofing
• Demolition
• Developers
• Diamond drilling and sawing
• Directional drilling
• Dry lining and partitioning
• Dry lining
• Erection of timber-framed buildings
• Erection or dismantling of exhibition stands
• Façade preservation
• Felt roofing
• Fibrous plastering
• Fitted kitchen / bedroom / bathroom installation
• Flat-glass glazing and emergency boarding up
• Formwork
• Garage door installation

• General building
• Hard flooring
• Hard landscaping
• Hard metal roofing (using copper, zinc, aluminium, titanium, stainless steel and bronze)
• House building
• Insulated enclosure specialists (ie cold storage contractors)
• Insulated concrete formwork
• Insulated rendering and cladding
• Interior fit-out
• Joinery and carpentry (mainly site work)
• Joinery manufacture
• Land drilling
• Lead working
• Liquid waterproof systems
• Mastic asphalt
• Netting and rigging
• Open-cast coal mining
• Painting and decorating
• Partitioning
• Passive fire protection
• Paving
• Piling
• Plant hire and plant repair
• Plastering
• Playground installation
• Powered access
• Preparing and fixing stone for building, including stonemasonry
• Rail plant hire and repair
• Railway contracting
• Reinforced concrete
• Resin flooring

• Road planing
• Road safety marking
• Road surface treatments
• Roof sheeting and cladding
• Roofing, including slating and tiling
• Scaffolding
• Sealant application
• Shelving and racking
• Shop fitting
• Single ply roofing
• Site preparation or groundworks
• Sprayed concreting
• Steeplejack or lightning conductor engineering
• Suspended ceiling installation
• Suspended platform installation
• Swimming pool construction
• Term maintenance – buildings
• Tool and equipment hire
• Tunnelling
• Underpinning
• Utilities
• Wall and floor tiling
• Window film application