Restore Trust’s Mission to Remove Employment Barriers in the UK Through Construction 🏗️🚀🔑

Jimmy Webb from the UK Construction Blog sits down with Chris Scriven, Director of Education at The Restore Trust, to explore how construction is helping people with complex backgrounds — including those with criminal records — find purpose and meaningful work.

From prison education programmes to hands-on training and mental health support, The Restore Trust is opening doors for people to rebuild their lives while helping the construction industry tackle its growing skills gap.

Here’s what you’ll hear in this episode:
 ✔️ How ex-offenders and at-risk individuals are starting rewarding careers in construction
 ✔️ Why breaking the cycle of reoffending saves the economy millions every year
 ✔️ The real impact of mental health training in the construction sector
 ✔️ How forward-thinking employers are giving people second chances
 ✔️ Why understanding addiction and wellbeing is key to a safer, stronger workforce

If you care about second chances, mental health awareness, or seeing construction transform lives, this episode is a must-watch.

 Learn more about the mission here: https://therestoretrust.org

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Transcript

From groundbreaking projects to game-changing innovations, the UK Construction Podcast brings you face-to-face with the industry's brightest minds and boldest thinkers. Each episode features candid conversations with construction leaders, architects, engineers, and on-site experts who share their hard-won insights and behind-the-scenes perspectives. We cut through the noise to deliver actionable intelligence on market trends, emerging technologies, and the forces shaping British building.

Jimmy: Welcome, everyone. This episode brings Chris Scriven, Director of Education at the Restore Trust. Chris, I'm really happy to have you on today. Thank you so much.

Chris: Thanks for having me on, Jimmy. I really appreciate it.

Jimmy: I occasionally get people recommending guests for me to talk to. An NVQ assessor that I'm affiliated with—I think you know Mike—he recommended you and I'm so glad he did because what you do needs to be out there. You're doing good stuff.

Chris: Thanks to him. It'll be good to be able to tell people about it today. Looking forward to it.

Jimmy: Well, let's do that then. What is it you do? Tell us.

Chris: We're the Restore Trust. We're a small not-for-profit organisation and we focus on adult education for people with complex needs and barriers to education and employment. We specialise in working with people who have been in contact with the offender system. We deal with diverse groups—quite a few different issues that perhaps more mainstream organisations wouldn't necessarily be able to deal with.

We deliver programmes both out in the community at our centre in Bristol and within Bristol Prison as well. More recently, we've been delivering 16 to 18 programmes for disenfranchised young people who've got involved in crime or are at risk of doing so.

Our main programme focuses on construction—an introduction to construction. It's very much about getting people into entry-level positions and supporting them to get their CSCS card. We pay for that and their tests upon successful completion of our programmes. They're normally done as sector-based work academy programmes, so they're linked with employers. They'll have site visits, some work experience where we can organize that, and a guaranteed interview with an employer at the end.

Jimmy: Good stuff. So you mentioned construction as your bread and butter. You also deal with the hospitality sector, don't you?

Chris: We do, yeah.

Jimmy: Construction is your bread and butter. So what makes construction the ideal sector to get these people in?

Chris: I think the sector itself is realizing how much talent is out there among those who have been involved with the offender system. They're able to cope with some of the risks involved in having someone with an offence on site, but also recognizing that people make mistakes in life and that shouldn't define them. It's about what they want to do going forward and how they can be a positive contribution to society. We work with some great organisations that are really supportive of that agenda.

Just to give you some context: it costs £53,000 a year to keep someone in prison. Every person we're able to stop from reoffending by getting them into employment makes a big difference in terms of economic impact. But when you add in the social factors—giving them purpose in life, identity, value, and the opportunity to contribute—plus the impact on their families as well. These can be perpetual cycles for families where criminality breeds criminality because of the environment they're in. Breaking that cycle and giving someone a positive opportunity elsewhere is key.

There's a lot of work that goes on in terms of interventions with people, but you need to combine that with opportunities. If there's nothing at the end of that support for someone to go on and do, they can end up back where they were.

Jimmy: I'm glad you touched on that. I was going to touch on that later. It's similar to a recent podcast I did with a guy from veterans into logistics. He gets veterans into construction work and logistics. It's a similar sort of thing. At the end of the day, it's a win-win for everyone. It's good for the economy. We've got 1.5 million homes that Labour wants to build in the next few years. There's a shortage of trades at the minute. So you're filling those spaces, giving these people purpose, something to strive for in life, supporting families. Hopefully helping their mental health as well if they're struggling because you're giving them finance and purpose. All round win, isn't it?

Chris: Yeah, and mental health is something that's really important for us in terms of supporting our students and clients. They will quite often have issues around mental health that they may or may not be aware of. Some have had ongoing support around that. Others might be dealing with issues they haven't quite come to terms with yet. What's really important for us is that they have some tools around that.

Most of our programs are less than four weeks, other than our boot camp programs where we're delivering skills training. But the shorter programs all have mental health awareness in them. We've found that's really helped people in terms of having a bit of introspection, looking at where they are, and considering how changes in their life are going to affect them. Some of that's perfectly normal. We get some really good camaraderie between the students about that.

One of the things that's really important for us, as well as the construction skills we develop, is developing the skills and qualities of those individuals and their understanding of what they've got already, because quite often they can feel like they don't have anything. When we do that kind of self-assessment, and other people look at that as well, it helps them recognize some of the value they've got.

If they don't have any qualifications and they've been told they need English and maths—it's not that English and maths isn't important, but in terms of that barrier to employment at this point, it's not the biggest issue. When I talk to our employers, the things they really want from people is reliability—that they're at work every day, on time, that they've got a good attitude, communication skills are good. One of the most important things is they're able to work with anyone on site. It's really important that they're able to get on with people. Removing some of those negative stereotypes that they might have is really important. That's become more challenging with a lot of disinformation that's out there. They are a group that are targeted quite a lot by that as well.

Jimmy: You kind of answered some of the questions I was going to say there, but there is probably a bit of a stigma. You kind of have to build relationships with clients to convince them that these people are good to take on. How do you go about doing that?

Chris: With our employers, what we've been able to do is have a good track record of producing good candidates that are work ready, that are keen to work, that want to make a difference, that want to progress and do well. One of the things that's really important for us is we will only work with employers where they will consider people on a case-by-case basis.

It's too easy for an HR department to make a blanket "no, we're not going to employ this sort of person with that sort of offense," because each story is different. Those offences can vary in degrees, and where someone was perhaps five years ago versus where they are now—that can be a real change. I know with clients we've had who've had drug and alcohol issues, that's what resulted in them being in prison. Now they're clean, they're dry. It's really about managing that rather than those behaviours that manifested them getting an offence.

Jimmy: Regarding drug and alcohol or any kind of substance abuse, is that touched on in your programmes? Do you help with that as well?

Chris: We do, yeah. Our introduction to construction programme does two things. One, it's about them being safe on site. Half the program is around health and safety—understanding the different instances they may encounter, what the law says about that, what they need to do, what their employer needs to do. They're really well prepared.

The other half of the programme is about their personal development, their behaviours, and dealing with welfare and wellbeing issues. Healthy living, healthy mind—those are really important. For the construction industry, there are two suicides every week linked to the construction industry. When I first heard that statistic, I was horrified. That's why we put the mental health qualification within our program—to support our learners.

When we started our provision about two weeks before lockdown, which was an interesting time to start, and coming out of COVID, we recognized some of those mental health issues that people are having. Quite often those will be linked to drugs and alcohol. It is a male-dominated industry, and there is that masculinity that can lead to social drinking going a bit further.

We work with them around understanding what it might mean having those drugs in your system, what it means for employment, but particularly what it means for safety—theirs and others on site. One of the things we do when talking about drugs and alcohol is helping them understand how long it stays in your system. I think a lot of them are ignorant to that. Drug tests do happen. Employers will do that.

Understanding the difference between having a couple of beers of an evening versus having a skinful and then realizing the next morning you're not fit for work—it's just not safe. We're connected to several different services as well—Bristol Drugs Project, ARA who also do gambling awareness. For any barrier that individual has, we're looking to create a support plan around that person and give them a toolkit to take away with them.

Jimmy: Great stuff. I think it's really important. I'm a crane operator, as you probably know, and you'd be surprised how many crane operators like to go out and have a drink of an evening or even get on the gear. But you touched on testing there. I've got views on testing. I understand there's a zero tolerance policy. A lot of companies, if you're found tested positive, you're gone. You're out. I think they should be looking at the cause and the core of why they're doing it. Maybe sit them down and say, "Where is this coming from?" and try and help them through it, give them some support, rather than just kicking them to the curb.

Chris: I totally agree, Jimmy. We are seeing more of that—a more understanding industry with construction. When you look at things like mental health, I'd like to see more of it in terms of mental health first aiders, but I am seeing that out there in the industry. People are starting to understand that. As you said early on, we've got a skill shortage at the moment and we can't afford to be throwing people to the curb and saying they've made a mistake, they're gone. It's not that that isn't serious—it needs to be dealt with—but equally a supportive approach and supportive attitude is really needed going forward. I think we are starting to see more of that. I hope we'll see more.

For us, one of the things is trying to get our guys to recognize the signs of stress, anxiety, depression—those kind of things that could lead them down that road of looking for something to be a crutch for them. That work around supporting people so they understand and can see those early signs a little bit more is really important. I'd agree with you certainly around the testing side of things.

We have a phrase that we use: being curious, not furious. I think that's a really good way of looking at things. It's very rare, but if we have one of our learners that has a bit of an issue or an episode and they kick off, our approach is not to go, "This person's awful, let's get them out the door." For us, it's "What led to that and what's going on with you? Let's have a conversation about that." Normally, what you find out is something else has happened either the morning or the night before. Suddenly all this stuff comes out and they've got real insecurity around their housing and they're going to be homeless tomorrow. It's those kind of things that we can do stuff around.

Jimmy: Yeah, sure. It's about breaking the cycle, isn't it? But it's not only people with convictions that you help—people with learning difficulties as well. Is that right?

Chris: That's right. People with convictions are disproportionately affected by learning difficulties as well. It's part of why they end up with convictions. Our population in terms of learners is about 60% coming from an offender background and 40% from other areas. People with learning difficulties and learning disabilities is something we see quite frequently. We have a lot of people with undiagnosed learning difficulties.

There's something called an EHCP—Education Health Care Plan—which is supposed to detail the support you require based on your diagnosis, but most adult learners do not have one of those. Once people leave school, they're lost as well. We have to quite quickly try and ascertain what might be some of those challenges for that individual and come up with support plans to support them.

We quite frequently see people with ADHD, dyslexia, and autism. We tend to get quite a few people with that. These things are on a spectrum, so there's varying degrees of it. Sometimes you'll see someone with all three. That's not uncommon. Dyscalculia as well. Lots of different things. We might have some people with hearing impairments and we make adjustments around those to support those people.

Jimmy: That's great. So how do your programs differ from traditional construction modules? Are they the same or do they differ? Like the learning programs?

Chris: The main construction program we do is mostly around health and safety. Then they'll do working in the construction industry—looking at different careers and jobs available for them, how they can progress through construction. They'll be working as a team, so they have some team building exercises and then preparing for an interview. As well as that, we do the mental health awareness as a qualification. We do conflict management now as well, because it's really important to employers that people get along and are able to support each other.

I think it helps dealing with things like stress and some of the other things you might get on a busy construction site. Knowing what your triggers are, what your inhibitors are, how you can manage that. What we've seen is that learners are able to support each other as well, because then they know each other's triggers and inhibitors and that helps them going forward.

Jimmy: That's interesting. Once they've secured work, do you mentor them still? Stay in touch?

Chris: Our main focus is on the education, but we do. We always say to our learners we're a safe place for them to come back. For those that may not be successful in gaining employment straight away, they come back and we'll do more careers work with them, work on things like CVs, go to different employers. We're quite often advocating at different employers for our clients as well. Particularly those that might have something about them that needs an adjustment, we may go and have a talk to one of our employers around, "Look, I've got this person, they'd be really good at this or this. Have you got a role that might fit like that?" Trying to find them a matching service really. That's something we'd like to do more of. It's one of those things where the funding's not there for it at the moment.

Jimmy: Yeah, sure. Talk about funding. You're funded by WECA, isn't it? West of England Combined Authority. How does this funding model work? Is it measured on outcomes or results?

Chris: We get adult skills funding and that's our core funding. That's based on the qualifications we deliver. Each one of those has a set value and we get paid an on-programme payment and then an achievement payment for someone completing and passing the qualification. Interestingly, one of the things they are talking about in 26-27 is the potential to link some of that funding with employment. It's something we've been very successful at. About 70% of our learners go on into sustained employment, which generally speaking for these sorts of programmes is normally more around 40%. Because we do a lot of work in terms of prepping our learners, and those links with employers is really important—the trust in those relationships has helped us.

The other funding we've got is for skills boot camps. We've just got a new round of funding for that. We've got one boot camp for retrofit for green skills—that's to train people in thermal insulation. There's nine million homes in the UK without proper loft insulation. If we changed all of that straight away, that would make a massive difference to the amount of energy use, the amount of costs that people have.

The next one we're doing is in partnership with the prison. Although we're doing all the delivery, they're providing the space. We're going to be delivering painting and decorating within there. It's quite different. I don't know that anyone else has done that yet—to deliver a boot camp in a prison. We're really looking forward to it. We've linked up with On Site Bristol as well, who provide apprenticeship training. People that have completed that program—they need to be within six months of release—Bristol is a remand prison, so we do have a lot of people that will be moving on. They can come out and go into apprenticeships in painting and decorating with On Site. They'll be slightly accelerated, so that will take about 20% of their apprenticeship away from delivery outside to hopefully speed it up a little bit.

Jimmy: I love apprenticeships. I really do. I rave about them. I think they died down for a while, didn't they? And they're starting to come back now.

Chris: Yeah. I've been running a NEET course for 16 to 18s—that's Not in Education, Employment or Training—for the disadvantaged. I've got 10 learners on program. We normally do about five to six weeks with them. We haven't finished the course yet and I've got four in employment already going into apprenticeships, which is great.

Apprenticeships are a really tricky one to get people into, I think. My view on it is around the structure of how we employ people within construction. You have the main developer that will be employing professional technical roles—your architects, your designers, your quantity surveyors, project managers—but they don't employ trades. They don't employ tradespeople. The labourers are all employed by agencies. The people we really need to get access to are the SMEs, who are the tradespeople, the smaller companies. Unfortunately for them, there's a lot of administration involved in apprenticeships. That's a real issue for them. I think it's a barrier to some of these people being able to access those.

Jimmy: I think the CITB can help with this. They've got lots of programs. They've got the Employer Network and all sorts of programs. A lot of companies don't know about them—they're not quite educated enough on it. If you're listening out there, look into the CITB because they do have a lot of resources and they want people to get out and work. They do provide or help with apprenticeships and they can mentor companies with how they can get people in. I actually interviewed Deb Madden—she's quite up in the CITB, she really promotes that. That is a way forward. But how do you find people? And how do they find you?

Chris: We don't really have a huge marketing presence out there. We work with the DWP, with the job centres, working with the work coaches and the SWAP teams—the sector-based work academy programme teams. We effectively let them know what our programs are going to be over the next three months. It's about matching those people to those opportunities. We work with probation, so we attend probation sessions, drop-in sessions, and for those people on community payback orders as well. They can do 30% of their hours with us as education rather than having to do a placement somewhere.

Others it's through word of mouth. "Go to Restore Trust, that's where I got my green card, they really helped me out." We get quite a lot of clients that way through word of mouth. Across our community sector, clients that someone else is supporting that are then at a place where they're ready to progress into employment or education—they'll be saying, "Have you thought about the Restore Trust?"

Our programs are normally done in small group sizes—normally about 10 learners in a class. That can be less intimidating. It's not a large college environment. There's not lots of 16 and 18 students running around if they're adults. Similarly for the 16 and 18 students, we've got a separate campus for them. I've got one member of staff who does two and a half days a week for us. They go around every job centre on a rotation—just spreading the word about what we have, what we can do. They do the business development side of things for us as well. They'll work with employers to create those opportunities. Learners knowing that there's a job at the end of it really supports them as well.

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Jimmy: Yeah, great. There's a lot of avenues there. I like the probation aspect. I did a year's probation in a different life many moons ago and I just felt like they were box ticking. I think we could have done with you there back then. It didn't really help me at all with anything. I think there is more care now than there was back then and more help from what I've heard.

Chris: In our region, we do a lot of work with probation. People won't know unless you're involved in that area, but years ago they were split into two—half went off into a private organization, half stayed in government—and that's now merged back together. There's been quite a lot of work going on and quite a lot of change for them to restore that and get these things working again together. That's been a real challenge for them.

We've had a fantastic relationship with them. It's that kind of thing of supporting people mutually. They've had a lot of challenges. We know with prison placements that our prisons have been full and that meant a load of early release and even more pressure on probation. Where we can input into that and support and try and take some of those things away from people, because otherwise you end up with people not getting the contact. We do a lot of that for them, which really helps. They're very supportive of their clients being with us as well.

Because of our work with them, we have information sharing agreements and that allows us to do risk assessments of individuals and allows us to perhaps have people on site that other people couldn't because they wouldn't understand the nuances around their risks. Because we do that and we're very much aware of those issues, we can support that individual around things like disclosure and how they can manage that. Believe it or not, the person that's most at risk in those scenarios is normally the person with the offence rather than someone else, because if they're found out and they've got a high profile case, they can quite often be in danger.

For us to find the right sort of employer for them and the right site for them to be able to work on—there are certain offences which will bar them from being in certain places. That could be gang related, not just sexual offenses. They can work in these both states. We've got an employer down there, they can work with them there.

Jimmy: I think it takes a certain sort of person to do this. What got you into it and what was the drive to this mission?

Chris: I came along about five or six years ago. I was asked to come on and set up the education arm for the company. Suzanne, who's our CEO—the company was born out of probation. It was her idea, creating those education and training opportunities for people. She's a really inspirational leader around that.

It's been really interesting for me as a journey. I had a real interest in supporting people in Bristol, supporting disadvantaged people. I've lived in Bristol all my life and this region—I wanted to give back to the community. I feel like I've got a lot out of Bristol and I wanted to do something for other people with it. That was part of why I came on board into this area.

But it's been a real eye-opener. Previously I've worked quite a lot with unemployed people and disenfranchised youth, but working with people with an offence—you start asking those kind of questions like, "Why would you work with that person? They got asked, how could you work with them?" People ask me that.

Jimmy: Is there a point where you would say to someone, "Actually, no, I can't help you. I'm not touching you"?

Chris: There's only a few people. I can literally count on one hand where I make the decision ultimately of whether or not someone can come on programme. If I'm looking at their offences and I'm not sure about this individual, there's only a few people that we've actually ever barred in terms of said no, we can't. What I would say about that is, "I can't deal with this person's risk as where they are now." That would generally be it.

The strange one—if anyone's got this offence, they're pretty much not going to work again—is arson.

Jimmy: Really?

Chris: Yeah. If you've got an arson offense, the companies just won't get insurance. That's probably the hardest offense to get someone into employment. There are others you'd think would be harder, but no, it's possible.

Jimmy: Even sex offenders?

Chris: Yeah.

Jimmy: That's interesting. Do you have any prominent success stories that you can think of, or people who've gone on to have sustainable careers?

Chris: There's quite a few. I'm terrible with names, but there's a few that have been notable. We had a learner not so long ago write to one of our tutors and email him just to say, "Just wanted you to know that I've got a supervisor's job today. I want to thank you for what you did because your course has stuck with me ever since." It's great when we have stories like that come through.

There was one which happened not so long ago. There's been a big development in Bristol at Temple Meads. They're building a new university campus down there and McAlpine have been doing the work. Myself and my business development manager, Alan, went down to the site to meet with the project manager and social value manager because they were interested in working with us. They arranged parking for us. We get to the gate and I'm looking at this lad and I'm thinking, "I know that lad from somewhere." He looked at us and went, "You're from the Restore Trust!" I went, "Yeah," and he went, "It's me, it's Bertrand. I was on your course."

Two years beforehand, he'd been on our course. The only way I can think of describing him—he was a bit of a hood rat. He didn't really want to talk to you. He was more interested in what was on his phone. We gradually got into that relationship with him whilst he was on course and brought him out of that. He was so lost almost. Then to see this guy on the gate—he was fit, well, healthy. He was really owning his job. He was so proud of it. To see that difference in him, and everyone knew him. It was funny because I went into the meeting and it was like, "That's really funny. One of our students is on the gate." "Bertrand? He's brilliant. We love him. He's great."

I didn't even really need to say what we did in the meeting because Bertrand told them everything they needed to know. That's who we produce. That's the sort of person you'll get from us if we work with you. We've had a fantastic relationship with McAlpine ever since. We're working with them at the moment. We've got a meeting coming up where we're looking at whether we can expand what we're doing down to Somerset to Taunton with the Hinkley site that they're doing down there, which is going to be a massive development.

Jimmy: That must give you a great feeling when that sort of thing happens. It just makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it? Because I imagine there's a lot of work that goes into this, a lot of headaches. When things like that happen, yeah, really rewarding, isn't it?

Chris: Yeah. Not just the adults, but some of the young people. I did some health and safety exams with some students last week and they all passed, which was great. But for some of them, it's the first qualification they've ever got. They've been out of school since—one of them year eight. He hadn't been attending school properly since then. They don't think they had it in them to be able to do it. They were so proud. They were like, "Well, I can get my certificate." I was like, "Yeah, I'll email you an e-copy but we'll get you a proper one." They're like, "Well, I can show my mum." I was like, "Yeah, of course you can show your mum." They were proud as punch. Those sorts of things—it's why we do what we do. Knowing the difference that's made to those kids.

Jimmy: Great. Absolutely. My wife is a wellbeing lead in a centre for kids who are not accepted into the school system. For whatever reason they're kicked out, nowhere will take them, so they go into the centre and they do the same sort of thing there. They teach them but mainly about their mental health. They give them certificates of these sorts of things and the feedback from the kids is unbelievable. They go to this place for safety predominantly because it's a safe place, but when they get a certificate and when they get something in their hand, they think, "My god, look at that." It's a sense of purpose and they value themselves. It's great, it really is.

Chris: It makes a massive difference. We've been working with Bristol Council on that and their post-16 team. They've been really supportive with those clients as well. I had one laddie—he missed his appointment for his CSCS test with CITB. We arranged for a reset last week and he did it and he phoned up my colleague at Bristol Council. He said he was almost in tears, he was that emotional about the fact that he passed. Just that kind of thing. Really nice to hear how much people appreciate it as well.

Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. So what is your vision for the future?

Chris: I think for us, really, it's about hopefully being able to develop what we do a bit more. One of the things we're really interested in doing is developing more training on the job, but not necessarily apprenticeships. As you said earlier, we've got a massive target of housing that we need. We desperately need housing. A lot of our students—we tend to see somewhere between one or three for each course at least that will have some housing issues, unsecure housing, sofa surfing, homeless. We have a lot of guys that turn up with no fixed address.

Part of why we're so keen to get them into employment is to give them some money to be able to actually secure housing, but that's assuming that it's there. We're looking at social housing as something where we would like to do some more work on that. I don't think it'll be so much housing development but really taking properties that need retrofit, that need updating, and making them more energy efficient, making them fit for people to live in, but using that as an opportunity for people to gain skills as well. Hitting many birds with one stone there.

One of my concerns about construction in terms of qualification and accreditation at the moment is that everything is really long. If you want to become a carpenter, a plumber, a plasterer, it's somewhere between a year and four years. Don't get me wrong, that's important. But that's such a huge amount of time for people that are living in crisis. It's too far away for them to see that they can get there initially. They need almost like breadcrumbs, a road towards. That's one of the things I'd like to see. I don't think we will, unfortunately, but I would like to see it.

The government's announced this new set of funding for free construction courses for job seekers. All of the qualifications currently listed at the moment are diplomas, so they're four to six hundred hours. They need to be delivered on the job in the most part, because for it to be an NVQ, it's got to be a workplace delivery. I think the industry needs to look at itself a little bit in terms of what it's asking of people to be able to get into the industry and be productive. That's not about compromising standards. I'm just saying about acknowledging the pathway that people are on and moving through.

We've just changed the rules around labourers cards. It used to be five years that you had a labourers card, now it's two and you can only get that renewed if you're showing employment as a labourer. But you can get a longer card as a trainee, but it's a red card. At the moment, if someone's got a red card, you're going to go, "Well, that's just temporary work. They don't have any skills at all." That's what people are thinking, because that's what we're programmed to think. I think there needs to be a bit of a change up around some of that stuff.

Jimmy: Absolutely. I get a lot of red cards contact me saying they're really struggling to find work. I think insurance is part of it, especially when it's so quiet at the moment. The companies can't insure these people. But I was speaking to a previous guest about the government and schools pushing the more academic roles rather than the labouring roles, which is counterproductive. It's to do with money, really, isn't it, at the end of the day?

Chris: Well, I think it's who they talk to. You've got these big developments, the big companies—the ones that are paying their apprenticeship levy, your Willmott Dixon, your BAM, some great companies, all of them. But they're not employing apprentices at level one, level two. I mean, not a level one apprenticeship, but someone at level one going into a level two. They're employing people going on a degree pathway.

That's great, we want that happening. I was heavily involved with degree apprenticeships in the past and I would wholeheartedly say to anyone who's thinking about going to university, look at a degree apprenticeship first because you get exactly the same qualification, you get paid whilst you're doing it, you get fantastic experience that you can take into your CV, and you don't end up with £40,000 worth of debt because the company's paid for it. It's a no-brainer. I think we need more of that.

But the levy paying employers—they're not employing the tradespeople. For me, that's where my client base are. That's their progression. I'm trying to find routes for them now. That's why we've looked at the painting and decorating. We've done the retrofit as well, because it's skills that they can learn in three to six months and go on site and be useful fairly much straight away, but then take on more.

If you look at the retrofit, they're learning some carpentry, they're learning some plastering, they're learning some painting and decorating, as well as then the specialism in terms of thermal insulation. You're not far off from being maintenance ops really, are you, with that? That's another area you can go. If carpentry is something that you found a flair for, that can then lead you to go, "I want to go and do some more of that." But they've got something at the end of that one thing to say, "Yeah, do you know what? I've achieved something in a much shorter space of time."

Jimmy: Have you thought about going to Parliament?

Chris: Well, we do talk to the Metro Mayor and Daniel James is our local MP. He's been really great with us. I think he wants to hear a bit more from us. I think I need to find some time to talk to him and others around these kind of things because you do what you know, I guess. If your experience of education is, "Did my GCSEs, did my A-levels, went to university, and now I've got a job as X or Y," that's what you think everyone's experience is.

If your experience is, "I really struggled sitting there in class every day because I had ADHD but no one diagnosed it and they just thought I was a naughty kid that misbehaved, and I haven't got my English, I haven't got my maths, I don't really know what I want to do in life"—it's a different thing. You've got a lot more to work through before you get to that "Why should I do this?"

Jimmy: Absolutely. Well, Chris, you're doing great things. Carry on with the work, honestly. It's inspiring. It really is. I wish you every success. Where can people find you?

Chris: You can find us online. I would say our website needs a complete refresh at the moment—we're working on it. But you can find us on LinkedIn or Instagram or on Facebook. Look for The Restore Trust—rather than Restore Trust because The Restore Trust is another organization that is trying to take down the National Trust. That confuses people at times. Our website is www.therestoretrust.org. If you look for us online, please get in contact. We're here to help.

Jimmy: Really good. Like I said, I've said to you before that Tom who owns this podcast—he owns one of the biggest construction blogs in the UK—so he's up for getting your logo on his website and I'm going to do the same for my website as well. Stick you on there as a resource and help you out that way. But I might be down in Bristol at some point, possibly doing some filming for a crane company, maybe on that project that you mentioned. I think it might be that one. So if I get time, it might be nice to meet up and have a chat and see what your base is like. Maybe even create some content for you as well that way.

Chris: Yeah, no, that'd be great. I mean, we haven't really spoke about it—you said about hospitality. We've recently opened up a café. That's a new charity project where we have people coming out of prison on placement for three months. But that's next door to our centre. Lovely coffee, lovely food. You can come and enjoy it. So please do come and visit us at the café as well.

Jimmy: You say charity, so you're going to give me free breakfast, yeah?

Chris: We might be able to do something like that. I wanted to mention, in terms of barriers to learning that we remove, we provide all our learners with a lunch. We run a food bank out of our place on a Tuesday as well. So learners can take food away with them—food packs. We always provide free transport as well. I want them focused on their studies and focused on getting those jobs rather than worrying about all these other things. If I've got them there and they've got food in their stomach, they're not going hungry, they're not worrying about where their next meal is coming from, they're focused on the studies and that's much better for me.

Jimmy: Yeah, I agree. There's no end to your greatness. Well, it's been great talking to you, mate. You put your points across really well there. Honestly, I'd never heard of you before Mike recommended you, so I'm glad he did. I'm going to keep a close eye on what you get up to.

Chris: No, it's really appreciated, Jimmy. Look forward to hopefully meeting you when you're next in Bristol. But yeah, do keep in contact.

Jimmy: Yeah, that'd be great. Will do. Well, you have a good evening and speak to you soon. Cheers, Chris.

Chris: All right. Cheers, Jimmy. Take care. Bye.