If asked where you might find the elusive answer to construction’s skills problem, you would be forgiven if your first response was not the small Gloucestershire town of Cinderford. Yet, in this  town in the Forest of Dean, two sisters believe they have done just that.

Nicola Bird and Natalie Bell, the third generation of family construction firm KW Bell, which works across Wales and the South-east, are the driving force behind AccXel, an industry training centre backed by the government and dedicated to preparing the construction workers of the future. The pair are busy creating a new model for construction education that they claim is modern, empowering and firmly focused on the requirements of industry. Were it not for the coronavirus pandemic, however, their brainchild might never have made it beyond a dusty Whitehall shelf.

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