As I have written before, the Governments public commitment to achieve the level of apprenticeships in the UK that they argue is needed to address the skills gap created by our departure from the EU has hit many snags. In the last few days there has been news regarding the collapse of one of the most obvious apprenticeship areas and sadly along with the impact this will have on the industry concerned, it makes it clear how long it will take for the more challenging areas such as the one I am personally interested in to begin to be treated with time and resources. The reason why early years apprenticeships should be resolved as a matter of priority is that the number of early years settings is very significant and the Government helps to fund the work of these settings for many parents. It is also widely known that the staff shortage in this sector is enormous due to the number of people who have previous worked in such settings, departing due to the mess the Government have made of its funding arrangements in recent years. The news report indicates how the Government agency that is responsible for Apprenticeships, the Institute for Apprenticeships has chosen to sideline the key employer, Busy Bees it was supposedly working with in its attempt to come up with a plan. My own contact with the Institute for Apprenticeships is much more limited. As a business we are keen to see Apprenticeships developed, both in terms of the training of our own staff and the skills needed for new recruits as our business grows. At a local level we have participated in meetings with local Universities and Further Education Colleges to explore how to shape their courses  so that they can appeal to our members of staff and so we can offer placements and vacancies to their students. However over time it has become clear that their courses are created under the templates set out by the Government who have created the Institute for Apprenticeships as their mechanism for doing so. I first contacted them in June this year and their responses lasted until the end of July when they all appeared to go on holiday and that seemed to be the end of their responses. It is clear that whilst the Government may claim to want to establish Apprenticeships that their willingness to pay attention to businesses is almost non existent. Of course this is not unique to this theme. The willing of the Government to listen to local authorities, to schools and to police forces is also wafer thin. However in the light of our proposed departure from Brexit, some of this wafer thin interest will either be torn apart or will need to be treated a bit differently!