Highways England is today urging people interested in making a real difference to road journeys across England to ‘sign up’ to become one of the dozens of apprentices the company plans to recruit this year.

The Government company, which manages England’s motorways and major trunk roads, is responsible for some of the country’s biggest construction projects.

Over the next few months it will take on up to 75 apprentices, with places made available through its website. Today, during National Apprenticeship Week, it urged people interested in building a road network for the future to sign up for alerts.

This year’s Highways England apprentice of the year, project manager Amelia Kirwan aged 19, said:

I urge anyone in my position to see what Highways England has to offer.

The opportunities available to me are huge. Highways England supports my learning and I am able to explore different areas of a varied sector. Our roads are an important part of everyone’s day-to-day lives and are heavily relied upon and therefore my role is really important.

Completing my apprenticeship will result in me achieving a Diploma in Project Management that is recognised worldwide – the possibilities are endless!

Highways England’s apprenticeship scheme supports the government goals to create 30,000 apprenticeships in road and rail by 2020.

New recruits will be helping to play a part in modernising England’s strategic road network by developing and delivering technically advanced projects. These include schemes such as the A303 Stonehenge improvements and The Lower Thames Crossing.

The company currently offers apprenticeships in business administration, IT, electrical engineering and civil engineering and Human Resources. It is planning to extend the list to include accounts, quantity surveying, transport planning and project management.

San Johal, Highways England Human Resources Director said:

This is a great time to join our team. We are investing in the next generation, and our apprenticeships are open to all and are a real alternative to traditional routes like university.

With the UK needing an extra 20,000 engineering graduates a year, Highways England is taking part in the Year of Engineering. This national campaign is all about showing young people what an engineer is, and what they can achieve.

For Highways England we need a continuing pipeline of young engineers to help deliver the massive investment planned for our motorways and major A-roads, benefitting the economy and improving people’s lives.

Each apprentice’s line manager at Highways England has been specifically chosen to teach and integrate the company policies and procedures, and to ensure that the apprentice has easy access to secondment and promotion opportunities. Every apprentice has a mentor and is supported to develop their career within the company.

Highways England continues to develop strong relationships with schools and colleges as part of a wider ‘early talent’ recruitment plan, to encourage children to continue the study of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, helping to inspire the engineers and construction professionals of tomorrow.

To find out more, and sign up for e-mail alerts or apply for an apprenticeship visit Highways England’s careers homepage

Schools and parents are also encouraged to log into The Big Assembly this Thursday 8 March, to join the thousands of people being online at the same time gaining career advice.

Further case studies are also available.

General enquiries

Members of the public should contact the Highways England customer contact centre on 0300 123 5000.

Media enquiries

Journalists should contact the Highways England press office on 0844 693 1448 and use the menu to speak to the most appropriate press officer.

What is happening?

The Parole Board is moving to a modern IT platform to help support its work going forward.

What does this mean?

This means that is necessary for the Parole Board to change all of its phone numbers and email addresses.

When will this happen?

The new phone numbers and email addresses will be active from 12 March 2018.

How will I contact the Parole Board?

Here are the new general enquiries and press enquiries contact details that you can use to contact the Parole Board from 12 March 2018:

What about writing to the Chair or CEO?

Here are the new email addresses to contact the CEO or Chair of the Parole Board:

Things to remember:

• Monday 12 March 2018 is the first day the new numbers and email addresses will be used.

• All phone numbers are brand new

• All email addresses will end with @paroleboard.gov.uk

Britain’s black cabs will get a new boost to go green when a tax exemption for electric taxis comes into force this April. The exemption, worth £1,550, will apply to new cabs purchased from April onwards, and follows the Autumn Budget announcement that zero emission taxis worth over £40,000 will no longer have to pay a Vehicle Excise Duty charge.

Currently, all cars over £40,000 are required to pay this charge. By exempting zero emission taxis, it is hoped that cabbies will be incentivised to replace their old diesel taxi for a cleaner, greener electric version.

If just one switches to a zero emission vehicle, it would rid the country of seven tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. With over 75,000 black cabs operating in England alone, the impact this would have on the environment would be significant.

Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond said:

We’re backing Britain’s black cab drivers to go green.

This is a victory for the environment and new technologies, which I am determined to support as we build an economy fit for the future.

Ensuring the air in our bustling towns and cities is free from pollution is part of our quest to become the first government to leave the environment in a better state than we found it.

CEO of LEVC, Chris Gubbey said:

We are delighted that the Treasury has brought forward previously announced changes to Vehicle Excise Duty for green taxis. These measures will encourage more cabbies to switch to zero emissions transport sooner – meaning improved air quality across the UK.

A small number of drivers who already own the vehicle or are expecting to take delivery in March will still have to pay an additional £310 charge. However, LEVC will compensate these drivers to ensure that they are not penalised for being the first to make the transition to a cleaner vehicle.

Traditionally, black cabbies have had limited choice in what vehicle they can buy. This has meant that until now, cabbies have been forced to pay charges which their competitors – who can choose more affordable vehicles – can avoid.

Not only will today’s exemption save drivers from paying the VED charge but by transferring to a zero emission electric cab they will also benefit from, on average, over £400 a month in fuel savings.

This is part of a wider government plan to transform air quality in our towns and cities. It builds on the £7,500 Plug in Taxi Grant, which helps cab drivers buy a zero emission vehicle.

And, at Autumn Budget, the government announced a £400 million Charging Infrastructure Investment Fund to support the industry to roll out charge points for electric vehicles across the UK.

Hayley Rogers, Office of the Parliamentary Counsel

Scratching my head over how to interest civil servants in a training course on the legislative process, I hit on the idea of creating a board game that would lead players through the process, from initial ministerial bright idea to fully implemented Act of Parliament.

For the uninitiated, this journey can often feel rather like an arcane game of snakes and ladders, so a board game seemed like the ideal way of bringing it to life. We were up against a deadline, so I drew the board freehand, and a group of us pooled our collective war stories on bills to come up with some realistic “chance” cards that would send players backwards or forwards through the process.

And so “Legislate?!” was born… that was four years ago, and since then it has been played by hundreds of civil servants at training events, along with students visiting Parliament and members of the public during Parliament Week. It has proved a popular and engaging way of helping people to understand the legislative process, with many comments along the lines of “It’s surprising anything ever makes it into law!”.

For some time now we’ve been asked whether we could make the game more widely available, and one player who came along to last year’s Parliament Week event just happened to work for GDS. Terence Eden offered us his expertise to turn the hand-drawn board into something digital, and the cards instructions for players and background information for facilitators into something printable.

You can access everything you need to play “Legislate?!”. If you have feedback, we’d love to hear from you.

Office of the Parliamentary Counsel colleagues

The Minister for Implementation, Oliver Dowden MP, has today (Tuesday 6th March 2018) announced that a new version of the G-Cloud procurement framework will open for bids in April, allowing new companies to join the framework – after delivering £1.4bn of spend to small businesses since its inception.

The decision to release a new version of the framework will support new companies, including small businesses, to supply to government, while also giving current suppliers the opportunity to update their service offer and pricing.

Companies will be able to bid to join the framework from April. G-Cloud 10 could eventually be worth £600 million.

G-Cloud gives central government, local councils, NHS Trusts and other public sector bodies a way to purchase cloud-based services such as web hosting from a single, central website.

Oliver Dowden, Minister for Implementation, said:

I’m pleased to confirm that we will re-let the G-Cloud framework, which provides opportunities to many small businesses in the digital sector. This will provide innovative online solutions to government, supporting the delivery of efficient, effective public services. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, so it’s crucial that we listen to them when shaping policy, as we have done today.

Rob Driver, Head of Public Sector at Tech UK, the industry trade body for technology companies across the UK, said:

For the UK Government to deliver its ambitious vision of being world-leading in the next wave of digital government transformation it must embrace the full diversity and strengths of UK tech suppliers, and innovative procurement vehicles such as G-cloud will be fundamental to achieving this vision. The announcement of the G-Cloud 10 Framework should be welcomed as it allows new innovative providers to work with government, enables new services to be provided and is an opportunity to engage with the wider public sector to make use of the framework.

The current version of the framework has 2,856 suppliers, over 90% of which are SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). The framework is expected to go live in June.

To find out more about G-Cloud, visit the Digital Marketplace.