Closing the composites skills gap - why training must move to the workshop floor
You can't train tomorrow's workforce with yesterday's system.
By Claire Arbery, Head of Strategic Workforce Development Solutions
The composites skills gap isn't new. We've been talking about it for a decade. What's changed is who's listening.
Skills England - the government body now responsible for fixing the disconnect between what industry needs and what the training system delivers - just held its first board meeting outside London. They came to NCC.
That's not the story though. The story is why it matters to anyone trying to build, repair or design with advanced materials in the UK right now.
The composites skills problem you already know
If you work in composites, you've felt this. The talent pool is too small. The same people rotate between the same companies. Senior engineers are retiring faster than juniors are coming through.
When you do find someone, they often need months of on-the-job training before they're productive - because what they learned in education doesn't match what you need on the shop floor.
The numbers are stark. UK skills shortages doubled between 2017 and 2022, reaching over half a million vacancies. More than 60 per cent of manufacturing employers report difficulty filling skilled roles.
The manufacturing skills gap cost the UK economy between £7.7 and £8.3 billion a year in lost output. And apprenticeship starts in manufacturing and engineering have fallen 40 per cent since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017.
In composites, companies are competing for a workforce that barely exists at the scale the sector needs. As the chair of Composites UK's Workforce Development Group put it recently: "We either do this or we don't have an industry."
This isn't a future problem. It's limiting production capacity today.
Why the training system is too slow for advanced manufacturing
Here's the core tension. Composites technology moves fast. Automated fibre placement. Digital twins for process control. Machine learning applied to defect prediction. New thermoplastic material systems.
The manufacturing methods our engineers use today didn't exist in university curricula five years ago.
But the formal training pipeline - write a standard, develop a curriculum, get it accredited, find providers, recruit learners, deliver the programme - takes years. By the time a qualification is approved, the technology has moved on.
This isn't anyone's fault. It's structural. The system was designed for industries where methods change slowly. Advanced manufacturing isn't one of those.
The incoming Growth and Skills Levy, which replaces the apprenticeship levy from April 2026, promises more flexibility. Employers will be able to use levy funds on short, modular training courses in areas like digital, AI and engineering. That's progress. But the detail - what's available, how quickly it can be tailored to composites - is still being worked out.
What works - training alongside the technology
Training works when it sits next to the technology. Same building. Same problems. Not in a classroom removed from the production. On the workshop floor, with the actual equipment, solving real manufacturing problems.
At NCC, our composites training runs from introductory hand lay-up through to advanced automated processes and composite repair. The courses are developed by the engineers doing the R&D. When a new process emerges, it feeds into training in months - not years.
We've also developed digital tools that accelerate workforce development. Our augmented reality work for hand lay-up training cut average ply draping time by 10 per cent. It reduced variation between operators by 37%.
An immersive training workbench developed with Leonardo improves part quality through real-time verification. Practical solutions to a real problem - how do you skill people faster without compromising quality?
Short. Modular. Employer-driven. Delivered where the technology lives. That's what closes the skills shortage.
Why Skills England matters to manufacturing
Skills England was established in June 2025, replacing the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. It sits under the Department for Work and Pensions and has a clear mandate - be the single authoritative voice on the country's skills needs and co-create solutions with employers.
It controls the levers. Apprenticeship standards. The Growth and Skills Levy. Higher technical qualifications. The whole architecture of how the UK develops its workforce.
Their delivery plan vision - "Better Skills for Better Jobs" - is focused on employer engagement, regional delivery and aligning training with the industrial strategy. That's promising. But it only works if the people making these decisions understand what advanced manufacturing actually looks like.
Not the PowerPoint version. The real thing. The complexity of getting a carbon fibre component right first time. The precision required in automated processes. The judgement calls that experienced engineers make every day.
Having the Skills England board walk through a live R&D facility - seeing the processes, meeting the engineers, understanding the gap between a curriculum document and a production reality - changes the conversation. Their choice to hold their first board meeting outside London at NCC - part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult - is a signal that the conversation is shifting.
What needs to happen next
Three things would make a real difference to closing the composites skills gap in the UK.
First, speed. The pathway from identifying a skills need to delivering accredited training needs to be measured in months, not years. Modular, stackable qualifications that employers can combine to match their actual requirements.
The new apprenticeship units arriving in April 2026 are the right idea - the test is whether they can be shaped fast enough to match what composites and advanced manufacturing employers actually need.
Second, proximity. Training works best when it's embedded in the environments where the technology is being developed and used.
The High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres - NCC included - sit at exactly this intersection. We're not just training providers. We're the places where the next generation of manufacturing processes are being proven. Skills development and technology development should be inseparable.
Third, breadth. The composites workforce development challenge isn't just about technicians. It runs from the shop floor to the design office.
We need people who can lay up by hand. We need people who can programme automated systems. We need designers who understand manufacturing constraints. And we need all of them to understand digital tools and data. These people can be from all parts of society and a diverse way of thinking can bring quicker and more innovative solutions. A skills strategy that only addresses one end of that spectrum won't solve the problem.
The shift that matters
For years, the UK skills conversation has been dominated by policy documents, funding mechanisms and institutional restructuring. Important, but abstract. Removed from the reality of building things.
Skills England's decision to come to where advanced manufacturing happens - workshop floor before boardroom - matters. The conversation is moving from policy to practice.
That's where it always needed to be.
Speak to our Skills team to learn about training opportunities for your organisation.