Canal & River Trust teams up with Leeds College of Building

LEEDS College of Building has joined forces with the Canal & River Trust to create 22 apprenticeships.

The Canal & River Trust is responsible for the maintenance of 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales.

Apprentices have been enrolled on either the carpentry and joinery or the brickwork courses at the college to develop skills to help protect the fabric of 200-year-old locks, bridges and tunnels.

Amongst other tasks the apprentices will be responsible for repairing and re-pointing brickwork using lime mortar and refitting oak lock gates, weighing several tonnes each, to ensure a watertight seal.

The frameworks which last an average of two years, will teach the apprentices a range of craft skills in college, complimented with work-based evidence, functional skills in maths and English as well as employee rights and responsibilities.

All 22 will achieve a level 2 intermediate apprenticeship qualification in wood or trowel occupations.

Vaughan Minshull from the Leeds College of Building’s Employer Engagement Team said: “There are a lot of prestigious features that form part of the heritage of our waterways and developing the required skills to maintain the standards of these features will be crucial for these apprentices. It’s a real privilege to be training the Canal & River Trust apprentices as it gives them the opportunity to be the next generation of people to care for the waterways and play an important and highly skilled role in the day to day repair and maintenance of our waterways.”

Leeds College of Building, which is the only specialist further education construction college in the UK, has enrolled more than 300 apprentices to date this year.