- The ECITB has awarded £250,000 to the Cumbria Robotics Operations Skills Centre, which aims to train 650 people by 2030.
- CROSS is being developed with UKAEA, Sellafield, Lakes College and other partners to provide practical robotics training for nuclear decommissioning and, eventually, wider engineering industries.
- The investment comes as Britain’s civil and defence nuclear workforce is expected to grow towards 120,000 people by the early 2030s, with digital and robotics skills becoming increasingly important.
A new robotics training centre in West Cumbria has secured £250,000 of industry funding as the UK nuclear sector steps up efforts to develop the specialist workforce needed for an expanding programme of decommissioning and nuclear construction.
The Engineering Construction Industry Training Board (ECITB) awarded the funding to the Cumbria Robotics Operations Skills Centre (CROSS), which is being developed at Lakes College and due to open later this year.
The centre aims to train around 650 learners by 2030, initially supporting apprenticeships including a significant intake from Sellafield before expanding into shorter modular courses for existing workers.
The £250,000 will fund curriculum development, teaching resources and shorter courses, while helping extend training beyond the centre’s original nuclear focus into other parts of the engineering construction industry.
It adds to £1m of support already secured from the UK Atomic Energy Authority through its FOSTER skills programme. More than £700,000 of that earlier commitment has been used to provide robotics equipment intended to replicate technologies and working environments encountered on nuclear sites.
ECITB chief executive Andrew Hockey said there was currently a shortage of robotics training directly applicable to engineering construction.
“This project and the new, cutting-edge CROSS facility help meet this objective by delivering much-needed robotics training to benefit Sellafield nuclear site and other ECI sectors in the future,” he said.
Robotics moves to deployment
The investment comes as robotics moves from research and demonstration towards routine use in some of the UK’s most challenging nuclear environments.
Sellafield has been trialling remotely operated quadruped robots for inspections, radiation monitoring and environmental mapping, reducing the need for workers to enter contaminated areas.
Earlier this year, the site demonstrated a fully remote method for dismantling plutonium-contaminated gloveboxes using robotics and laser cutting. Sellafield has also begun moving its Spot robot platforms from trials into business-as-usual operations and is integrating them with digital twins and other plant information systems.
That creates a workforce challenge alongside the technological one. Deploying robotics safely in nuclear facilities requires technicians who understand not only the equipment itself but remote operations, radiation environments, nuclear safety procedures and plant-specific working practices.
Kirsty Hewitson, director of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Collaboration at UKAEA, said at CROSS’s launch that advancing technology without developing the people capable of deploying it would limit its usefulness.
“Alongside advancing robotics and innovation, we must ensure that people have the skills to develop and deploy these technologies and innovations in real-world environments,” she said.
CROSS brings together UKAEA, the National College for Nuclear and Clean Energy, RAICo, Sellafield, Lakes College and companies in the nuclear supply chain. The National College is leading development of the curriculum while Lakes College acts as the ECITB-approved training provider and hosts the facility.
Nuclear expansion increases pressure on skills
The wider workforce requirement is substantial. Government and industry modelling suggests Britain’s combined civil and defence nuclear workforce could increase from around 96,000 people in 2024 to approximately 120,000 by the early 2030s.
The government’s Nuclear Skills Plan is intended to help deliver roughly 24,000 additional roles by 2030, with its latest regulatory reforms placing greater emphasis on digital capabilities alongside traditional engineering disciplines.
Cumbria is particularly exposed to that demand. Sellafield remains the UK’s largest and most complex nuclear clean-up project, while Barrow’s submarine programme is creating additional competition for engineering skills across the North West.
The ECITB has now committed more than £3m to its Regional Skills Hubs programme, which supports additional training capacity in industrial areas expected to host major energy and decarbonisation investment. Around £1.6m had been committed before the Cumbria award, alongside £14.4m of matched funding from industry partners.
For CROSS, the longer-term opportunity extends beyond nuclear. Remote inspection, robotic maintenance and automation are increasingly relevant to offshore energy, chemicals and other hazardous industries.
Its immediate test, however, will be at Sellafield: whether training can keep pace as technologies that were experimental just a few years ago become part of everyday nuclear decommissioning.
