Didn't apprentices use to start at 15 years, i.e. school leaving age?

Yes, apprentices could start when they were fifteen years of age and on an indentured scheme.

Gov employemnt rules now state "Children can only start full-time work once they’ve reached the minimum school leaving age - they can then work up to a maximum of 40 hours a week.".

Employer may have to double check any caveat with employers liability terms and conditions, but apart from that risk assessmnets etc to be produced where young persons are employed and any mitigation on what they can and cant do or get involved with.

Cheers GTB

Sergio Fernandez said:

Most companies insurance won’t have 16-17 year olds on the books.  As an industry we need to educate our insurance companies.

I think the issue, perhaps, is 'fear' of legislation ... in particular The H&S (Young Persons at Work) Regulations 1997 which effectively make it extremely "risky" (in terms of insurance/prosecution and risk of litigation) for construction/engineering companies who are considering employing under-18's, unless perhaps it's a private family-run business employing a close family member..

Seem like there needs to be a roundtable discussion between

TESP

HSE

(PRA) The Prudential Regulatory Authority and (ABI) The Association of British Insurers

To get things moving and resolve the issue.

In the UK we need more engineers of all disciplines thus we need more ways to get people young or older into the industry with theory knowledge and practical onsite skills. 

Well, start at 16 since the school leaving age was raised in the 70's.

Technically its now 18, but as long as the organisation you join at 16 has an approved scheme you can still start at that age. But it tends to be the bigger companies that have the approved schemes.

I would argue that a good employer should have nothing to fear.

This falls into general Health and Safety, a company has a responsibility to their employees (and others). It doesn't matter if the person is under 18 or not, if bad practices result in an accident, the HSE and others will take a dim view. I would expect they would eventually struggle to hire people, who would go work for a company if you knew there was a risk of coming to harm? (ok, lets put the forces to one side, that's a special case)

This is one of the reasons that the organisation I work for has several safety schemes, mandatory briefings, mandatory training, and accident prevention schemes. There still are accidents (fortunately rarely) but by those schemes they can demonstrate to the HSE that they have made reasonable means to prevent them and learn from them when they do happen.

I'm aware that there are safe constructor accreditation schemes.

So maybe, its not just education of the insurance companies...