A near-£29 million donation will fund training and apprentice wage costs in a bid to rescue dying heritage craft skills in the UK.
The donation, made by philanthropist Hamish Ogston, will provide a “sustainable, future-facing ecosystem of heritage conservation” to the sector, he said. It will fund training for up to 2,700 people across the UK and Commonwealth, and will “ensure the survival of some of the greatest historic buildings around the world”.
That will come as a welcome boost to a sector struggling to recruit apprentices in England due to low demand and high training costs.
Ogston’s donation comes as FE Week revealed earlier this year that only a quarter of heritage crafts in England, some of which have a history of apprenticeships going back centuries, have government-approved apprenticeship standards today. Many of those, despite being approved, are not being delivered due to a lack of demand and high-cost training facilities.
