Shaun Wadsworth’s CFA Skills and Labour 2024 Round-Up and 2025 Plans

In 2024, the Contract Flooring Association (CFA) continued to address one of the flooring industry’s most pressing issues: supporting our sector to continue to be able to grow and maintain a suitable skilled and trained workforce.

The CFA has successfully directed and coordinated substantial changes to recognised funding pathways, supported all areas of the UK, ensuring quality provision remains, as well as developing and growing partnerships within industry, external educational institutions and government agencies.

The CFA’s commitment to skills development has reinforced its role as a cornerstone of support within the flooring industry. As the year draws to a close, I wanted to highlight some key industry successes and outline what 2025 holds for CFA and training initiatives.

This year the CFA expanded its focus on education and training, completing two particularly important sections of work around formal qualifications for flooring installers. With the support of CFA members, training organisations and government departments, both the Floorlayer Apprenticeship Standard and the Floorlayer NVQ have been updated. The apprenticeship standard has had a complete review, with critical updates to training and assessment criteria and just as importantly, funding. The funding training providers receive for training has increased by 30% and training content is better aligned to what is expected from industry. CFA helped complete a review of the National Occupation Standards (NOS). This will see the NVQ Level for those completing the Floorlayer NVQ rise from a Level 2 to a Level 3 qualification, reflecting the skill level associated with the floorlaying sector and allowing for multiple inroads into other initiatives to grow skills and labour.

2024 has also seen flooring training in Scotland for apprentices move to a new home after being displaced due to closures in Glasgow, creating an invigorated approach to apprenticeship training in Scotland through CITB, and in 2025 I fully expect the number of enrolments to grow. CFA has also supported in the return of apprenticeship training in Wales too, with support for Gower College, Swansea as they embark on their first year of delivery for our sector, offering a dedicated training area to Welsh employers to formally train their apprentices.

CFA continued its support of promoting best practice in the training sector by again hosting the popular Flooring Apprentice of the Year competition, with Kyle Waler, an apprentice at MacGregor Flooring Company, being crowned this year’s winner and receiving a prize pool of well over £10,000 generously donated by a range of manufacturers, distributors and stakeholders.

Continuing our commitment to highlighting those within our sector that promote high quality to the next generation of installer is an absolute cornerstone of our industry support. As is developing new initiatives to engage with potential entrants into our industry. Through the training arm of CFA, the Flooring Industry Training Association (FITA) has in 2024 increased the number of apprentices undertaking formal training, increased engagement with industry on private training and co-hosted events such as Open Doors Construction, opening the training centre to school pupils for the local area to see the floorlaying trade firsthand, something those pupils would not have seen otherwise.

So, what does 2025 hold for CFA and training? First, all of the support and direction provided for projects in 2024 will continue, with FITA increasing apprenticeship delivery out of its Loughborough site again in 2025 and engaging with other stakeholders to develop provision in new areas of the UK too. FITA will also engage with Open Doors Construction, manufacturers, distributors and other stakeholders to ensure if there is a training need or initiative, it can be serviced.

CFA will provide an update to the ‘Future Fitters’ campaign, aimed at identifying and increasing the number of floor fitters (of all ages) entering the UK commercial and domestic floorlaying industry, first launched in 2022. The overall objective for Future Fitters remains the same: ‘To identify as many solutions and entry points as possible for those wishing to reach out to potential new employees.’

With support from the industry, we provide a full and robust update on guidance in all areas within the campaign as well as adding much needed content such as females within flooring, equality, diversity and inclusion, career changes, those leaving the armed forces and much more.

Finally in 2025, CFA will engage on a large piece of work centred around competency within construction (but specifically flooring installation). The events of the Grenfell Tower tragedy have led to significant regulatory changes including amendments to the Building Safety Act.

These changes have placed a heightened emphasis on the competence of all trades involved in building safety, evolving the act to redefine ‘competence’ to encompass not just an installer’s skills, knowledge, and behaviours but also practical experience. This shift demands a comprehensive reassessment of how competence is demonstrated by the installer and how it’s verified within the flooring sector, something the CFA will drive with a dedicated working group consisting of relevant industry stakeholders and bodies such as CITB and CSCS.

The CFA looks forward to engaging on all these projects and more in the next 12 months, reiterating the importance of the trade associations and its members and the part they play in shaping the future of the industry.

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