The number of jobs in manufacturing has grown in six of eight English regions along with Wales, highlighting the importance of the sector to hopes of levelling up across the UK by creating high skill and better paid jobs.

For this episode Electronic Specifier Insights, ES talked to Charlotte Horobin, MakeUK’s Regional Director at Midlands and East of England about MakeUK’s efforts to engage with the manufacturing field and bring out the most in the industry.

Ellie Jukes is a first year Make UK apprentice working at Hitachi in Stone and for International Women’s Day, she shares her experiences as a young woman entering the male-dominated engineering sector.

West Midlands mayor, Andy Street, heard the views and concerns of the region’s apprentices, when he visited Make UK ’s Technology Hub in Aston, Birmingham, to meet the latest cohort of engineering apprentices and Make UK’s apprentice ambassadors.

Make UK has partnered with support platform Next Gen Makers to develop a ground-breaking Engineering Apprenticeships Employer Kitemark, which will recognise companies who achieve a best practice benchmark, and thus endorse them as an exemplary employer of apprentices.

Industry groups representing companies across Europe are pressing the EU 27 leaders to work with the UK Government to avoid a catastrophic no deal Brexit and the economic damage it would bring to British companies as well as businesses and workers throughout the EU.

A new partnership has been announced by Make UK, with Vauban Group, to develop and deliver new cyber security services to members. Manufacturing companies are the third most frequent victim to cybercrime, behind only banks and Government departments, yet they are the least protected of all sectors against attack, the consequences of which can be devastating.