Early Christmas present for Aster apprentices

Local housing association, Aster Group and Bradfords Building Supplies are working in partnership to provide a group of new apprentices a step up the career ladder. 

Bradfords Building Supplies was keen to show its support for the next generation of trades and presented toolboxes to seven lucky Aster apprentices as part of its ongoing support for the Aster apprenticeship scheme. The new Stanley Babushka toolboxes which are each worth £1,000 contained a range of tools the trainee carpenters and plumbers would need for their future roles.

Apprentices, Will Green, Liam Gale, Karl Jackson, James Hodge, Tyler Baker, Alex Sanchez, Billy McNeilly joined Aster this year  and are part of the Dorset Response East and West teams.

“I’d definitely recommend an apprenticeship at Aster. There’s a lot of opportunities and progression, there’s always support available and these toolboxes will really help,” said Will Green, one of the apprentice carpenters accepting his toolbox.

The Aster apprenticeship programme enables people of all ages to learn and gain experience in a variety of roles across the organisation each year. It’s success has been recognised in the National Housing Maintenance Forum 2020 awards shortlist for Best Apprentice Scheme. The awards will be presented in a ceremony in Birmingham on 21 January 2020.

Neil Shardlow, Aster head of operations, South said, “Our apprenticeship programme is an important part of our ongoing work to support the next generation of skilled trades to ensure our homes are good quality, well maintained and safe. This year we invested a record £52.5 million into repairing and maintaining our homes across the South and South West of England and this group of young people will help us to continue that delivery into the future. It’s great to see Bradfords working with us to support them.”

David Cooke, Bradfords partnership director, commented: “As an independent and family owned business with 700 staff and 55,000 customers, we take our commitment to the communities where our 42 branches are based very seriously. Working with organisations like Aster helps Bradfords to deliver on its own social value commitments. We hope the tools, provided by Bradfords will help each apprentice at the start of a rewarding career with Aster.” 

Bradfords, who are celebrating their 250th anniversary in 2020, have been providing building materials to Aster Group, since 2016. Bradford’s Partnership Team was formed to provide, innovative, customer focused solutions to Housing Providers and is an important and growing part of Bradfords business model.