The weekend media trail that the prime minister will be announcing £250bn investment in infrastructure should come as no surprise. Every government looks to capital investment in a recession because of both the fiscal stimulus it provides and the headlines it offers. It’s the right thing to do even though on its own it is far from enough.

College leaders will be pleased that their needs have not been overlooked this time in the weekend’s schools announcement, with £200m of capital for bringing colleges up to good standards being brought forward to this year. It is one of the proposals in our skills-led recovery plan, Rebuild, we published earlier in June and shows that the government recognises the central role colleges will play in the recovery from the crisis.

A simple allocation to colleges in the next couple of weeks could see this being used for the adaptations, equipment and digital investment which will ensure over 2 million college students get the best possible learning experience this autumn. I just hope that the PM’s urge for speed infects the officials in the Department for Education on this one and that it is the first of many of our proposals to be implemented.  

Long read: How to spend £1.8bn on college estates and buildings?

Background: Conservatives announce £1.8bn for college buildings

Opinion: ‘We’ll carry on pointing out the injustice’

Simple but deliverable proposals 

After writing last week about my dismay that college students were excluded from the catch-up funding announced for schools, it’s good to see something positive this week. Perhaps more promising though is the PM’s commitment that the country would “absolutely not (be) going back to the austerity of ten years ago” seen under former Tory leader David Cameron. That’s the austerity that led to a decade of neglect for colleges, with a 30 per cent reduction in overall income and funding rates that have not changed for seven years despite rising costs. The impact has been fewer learning places for adults, less teaching time for students, less student support, reduced extra-curricular activities, college staff pay falling behind and many colleges struggling to survive financially.

With the House of Commons library analysis indicating that unemployment levels could soar to levels not seen since the 1980s, the infrastructure spend must be one of a range of measures the government takes. Colleges need to be at the heart of those measures. Back in 2009, the chancellor at the time used his budget speech to make a simple but important statement which is as true now as it was then. He said: “Governments must give people targeted help to find a new job as quickly as possible - and, where necessary, to gain the new skills which will allow them to do this. This is not just morally the right thing to do but economically essential.” It would appear from what the PM has been saying over the weekend that he would agree.

That’s great news because our recovery plan has some simple but deliverable proposals on how to go about that “essential” work. I just hope for some joined-up thinking. Take the new Infrastructure Delivery Taskforce, which is being established to “look across the full range of government’s public investment projects and cut delivery times by removing bottlenecks at every step of development and delivery”. One of the bottlenecks will be the availability of people with the skills needed by the construction and engineering contractors. Due to a combination of Covid and Brexit consequences, getting the people with the right skills could be a major obstacle. Workers will struggle to come to the UK to work just as the government investment increases demand in those sectors. It was a challenge filling many vacancies before the pandemic and it will require collaborative thinking from across government departments and sectors to overcome quickly.

Joined-up and strategic thinking

So, how about getting an expert in skills, training and workforce on the taskforce? How about an apprenticeship target for every contractor which guarantees young people real jobs with training? How about support for colleges struggling with a collapse in demand for apprenticeships since lockdown, which is putting their capacity at risk?

This latter issue is urgent. Colleges employ many thousands of specialists to train most of the engineering and construction apprentices. Because of the collapse in apprenticeship numbers and with no real prospect of pick up soon, colleges have had to start announcing redundancy plans.

With no action to support them, we will lose the very expertise and facilities that will be essential to deliver the infrastructure the PM wants. We need joined-up and strategic thinking, and we need it now. The chancellor has also made warm noises about the need for training and skills and has the perfect opportunity next week to invest. Our plan provides a great blueprint.