Keith Fryer, Chairman of the TTF Education and Careers Committee and of the Norton House Timber Industry Education Group, explains a little more about the wood industry’s decision to establilsh a relationship with ProSkills, the Sector Skills Council for, amongst other things, the construction products supply chain. The Norton House Timber Industry Summit two years ago saw the industry associations agree to address some fundamental supply chain issues including education training and careers. At that time a Norton House Timber Industry Group was formed, which comprises the entire supply chain. Its members have signed a concord agreeing that we all work together. I agreed to take on the Chairmanship of this group in January from Charles Grant and Pauline Kelly who did a fantastic job. Since then we have focused on identifying what the industry needs to ensure a framework that gets our people the right training, skills, apprenticeships and knowledge to drive this industry forwards. One of the first issues identified as an area needing urgent attention has been to find a partner for the group, that understands this highly complex area, has the people to cope and can help us all to move forwards, with programmes that attract government funding and also give our people credits that build up a ‘currency’ that will be easy for employers to understand. The group felt our current Standards Setting Body, UKWoodchain was unable to help us deliver on this ambitious aspiration despite their best efforts. After a great deal of research, ProSkills have been identified as the right partner to bring this about and the group is at the point of signing up with them; our next group meeting in July should get us to the point of agreement. One element of the agreement is that the group will need to input £20,000 into ProSkills. Trying to decide what amount each member will contribute is inevitably difficult and it is likely that the TTF will take the lion’s share of this cost, which we intend to fund from those reserves which we have built up. On a personal level I feel it is an incredibly fortunate position for us to be in, because the move to ProSkills is ideal and will put the industry into a position that it has never had before, where a unified approach will be to the benefit of all. I hope that this letter is self explanatory, but would be very happy to discuss it with you or your colleagues at any time.