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CITB Skills and Training Fund
Advice for micro-sized and small construction businesses

Tackle tomorrow with up to £10,000 for training​

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What this fund is for?

​No matter how small your business, CITB’s Skills and Training Fund is offering you funding up to £10,000 – to invest in training and equip your workforce to face the future.​

The Skills and Training Fund provides an extra incentive to access CITB grant eligible-training and supports a wide range of activities.

You can also use the money to tailor a training programme in construction or leadership and management that suits your business and the needs of your staff.

Whether you’d like to enhance efficiency, jump on opportunities to grow or motivate your team – with this support, you’ll be better prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.​

Who can apply for funding?

You’ll be eligible to apply if:

  • You have up to 99 directly-employed staff (in addition to yourself/the business owner)
  • You are a CITB-registered employer and up to date with your Levy Returns
  • Any previous project paid for by the Fund has been signed off as complete

How much can you apply for?

You can apply for funding related to how many direct employees you have:

  • Employers with CIS only (no PAYE) can receive up to £2,500
  • Employers with 1 to 49 directly-employed staff can receive up to £5,000
  • Employers with 50 to 74 directly-employed staff can receive up to £7,500
  • Employers with 75 to 99 directly-employed staff can receive up to £10,000.

How often can you apply? 

You can apply twice in 12 months but can only have 1 live project at a time.

Before you apply

Make sure you have read and understood these documents:

You should also ​discuss your application with your local CITB Adviser. They will be happy to assist and to ensure your application form has been completed correctly.

How to apply

  1. Download and complete the Skills and Training Fund application form (Excel, 397KB) to apply. For guidance and support when completing your application form, watch our video guide.
  2. Complete all fields, saving the form regularly to prevent loss of data.
  3. Save and send the completed form to skills.training@citb.co.uk.

Make sure the training activity you specify takes place in the future and not in the past. We are unable to fund retrospective activity.

What happens next?

Assessing applications

The Skills and Training team will review and score all applications at the end of each submission window (typically at the end of each calendar month).

You should receive a decision from us by email around the 15th of the month after your application was submitted. For example, if you apply any time during the month of July you will have a decision from us around 15 August. We would appreciate it if you do not chase a response within this period and we will inform you of the outcome as soon as possible.

Application decisions

We will review and score all applications against the Fund criteria (as set out in the guidance notes (PDF, 202KB)). Applications that meet our criteria will be approved for funding.

Approved:

If your application meets the Skills and Training Fund criteria, it will be approved and processed for payment.

Declined:

Your application may be declined if:

  • Your application does not meet the Skills and Training Fund criteria or you are asking for courses or activities that are outside the Fund criteria
  • You have not submitted your most recent Levy return
  • You are behind on your Levy payments

We will advise you on why we have declined your application or will communicate this via your CITB Adviser. You can re-submit an improved application in future months.

Monitoring and completing training

After the funding payment has been approved you can start your training activity.

You will need to retain evidence of all invoices as you will need to submit these to CITB to demonstrate that the training has taken place.

As your funding agreement approaches its expected completion date you will receive a reminder e-mail requesting evidence of expenditure and asking you to populate a Completion tracker (Excel, 326kb). 

Your collated evidence and completion tracker should be sent to skills.training@citb.co.uk within 28 days of receiving the e-mail. If you are experiencing challenges with finalising your training programme, contact us to request an extension.

We will also ask you to complete a survey to share your feedback with us.

Your contribution will help us to continually improve the Skills & Training Fund.

What happens if circumstances change?

If your business needs change, contact skills.training@citb.co.uk as soon as possible and we can discuss alternative arrangements with you. This could result in the money being returned or agreeing to a new training schedule.

Publicity and communications

We may wish to publish details of your project on our website once funding has been approved and ask to work with you to develop press releases, case studies or promotional videos relating to your project either during delivery, or upon completion.