UK DIY News

Wolseley: 'Apprentice Crunch' Remains, Despite Government Pledge

Majority of trade installers won’t be able to take on apprentices despite Budget pledge to make apprenticeships free

The UK’s largest specialist merchant group, Wolseley, parent company of Plumb Centre and Renewables Centre, is warning that the UK’s trade sector remains in an “apprentice crunch”, despite the Chancellor’s Budget announcement that apprenticeships will now be free for employers and learners.

A groundbreaking report from TrustMark, supported by Wolseley, shows that cost is only one barrier in a far more complex system. The vast majority of plumbing, heating and RMI businesses still feel unable to take on apprentices due to time pressures, burdensome paperwork and inadequate training provision. These are issues that free course fees alone will not fix.

The report, Skilled to Build: Empowering the UK’s RMI Sector for a Better Future, shows that almost four in ten businesses (39%) say the paperwork and bureaucracy involved in finding and recruiting an apprentice is too burdensome, while nearly a third (29%) report inadequate support from training providers. Employers also say they lose significant productivity because they spend almost half their time supervising apprentices which is time they simply cannot afford to give up.

Businesses consistently highlight paperwork, a lack of time to supervise, and concerns about the quality of training as their biggest obstacles. Meanwhile, apprenticeship completion rates have collapsed from 55% (2017/2018) to 35% (2022/2023).

Following the Budget announcement that vocational courses will now count towards the Government’s new 50% higher education target, Wolseley is warning that policy ambition will not translate into workforce growth unless these deeper, structural barriers are addressed.

John Hancock, Chief Operating Officer at Wolseley Group, said:
“You cannot rebuild Britain’s homes without rebuilding its workforce. Every early-career installer we fail to bring into the industry today is a lost opportunity to secure the future capacity the UK desperately needs.”

“The Chancellor’s decision to make apprenticeships free is welcome. But cost is only one part of the problem. Installers tell us the real barriers are time, paperwork, and navigating a fragmented, overly complex system. Unless we fix those pain points, we will not attract or retain the volume of apprentices Britain needs.”

TrustMark’s ambitious national survey of 1,233 small and micro RMI firms, undertaken by Eureka! Research, shows clearly why free apprenticeships alone will not unlock the capacity the UK requires. These pressures fall heaviest on the small, often one-van firms that dominate the trade economy where taking on even a single trainee has a meaningful impact on the owner’s capacity, revenue and workload.

These challenges are converging with an escalating retirement crisis. TrustMark’s data shows that 44% of the workforce is already over 55, and a quarter of those older workers expect to stop or semi-retire within three years. Without meaningful intervention to attract and train new entrants, the UK faces longer wait times for essential home repairs, higher costs for consumers, slower deployment of low-carbon heating and energy-efficiency measures, and increasing pressure on regional economies that rely heavily on trade-based SMEs.

Wolseley is urging government to use the momentum of the free apprenticeship announcement to go further. The company is calling for a simplified, single-entry route to apprenticeship funding and onboarding; stronger promotion of trade careers in schools; more practical support for micro-businesses who train apprentices; and modern, industry-led curricula that reflect real-world installation standards and the clean-heat technologies critical to the UK’s net-zero ambitions.