Salix Homes celebrates National Apprenticeship Week 2020

Salford-based housing association, Salix Homes, celebrates this year’s National Apprenticeship Week ahead of its fifth anniversary in March.

The annual campaign aims to celebrate apprenticeships and raise awareness of how they benefit people, businesses, community and the economy.

Housing association, Salix Homes which became independent from Salford city council in 2015 and now owns and manages around 8,000 homes across Salford, has hired 29 apprentices internally in the last five years and 89 through its contractor partners as part of their contractual obligations.

Apprenticeship roles hired within the organisation include business admin, customer services, plumbing, plastering and first response roles.

Ella Scully began at Salix Homes as an Business Services apprentice, before being offered a full-time employment with the housing association. Ella has also recently passed her Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Level 5 qualification.

Ella said: “An apprenticeship is a great alternative to university. It provides you with valuable, hands on experience, not just for a specific role, but it also gives an insight into what’s involved working for a business day-to-day and prepares you with general working skills.

“There’s also lots of opportunities to gain further qualifications during the role and the possibility of a full-time employment offer at the end of the apprenticeship.”

Sue Sutton, executive director of operations at Salix Homes, said: “Salix Homes is very proud to once again support National Apprenticeship Week and we hope it will encourage many more young people to consider an apprenticeship as a start to their career.

“Providing jobs and a career path to local people was one of the key promises we made to our customers when we transferred away from the city council in 2015, so to look back and see how many people we have helped provide those opportunities to, makes me immensely proud.

We’ve had some fantastic success stories through our own apprenticeship programme over the past five years and I’m looking forward to continuing on with this successful programme for many years to come.”

Salix Homes celebrates its fifth anniversary on Monday,23 March 2020.