A FORMER Apprentice star has represented Bolton at a meeting of the House of Lords on the topic of gender inequality in the building trade.

Michaela Wain, from Breightmet, first rose to national prominence when she took part in the BBC reality series in 2017 and since then has been trying to help attract more women into the construction industry.

Last week's meeting at the House of Lords saw Ms Wain speak to a Forum of the Built Environment event hosted by Lord Deben on the disparities between men and women in the sector.

She said: "Yesterday speaking at the House of Lords was so much fun, talking about women in construction and how the industry can attract and retain more women!"

Figures gathered by the GMB Union have shown that just 12.5 per cent, coming to one in eight of construction workers are women, while from mid-2020 reveal over six times more men were employed in the UK construction industry than women.

As such Ms Wain has spent much of her career since the Apprentice trying to promote greater awareness of the gender disparities facing her industry in Bolton and beyond.

In doing so, she has run her Design and Build UK marketing magazine and has made the Woman in Construction Awards a major recurring feature of the publication.

She also added "diversity and inclusion" as one of the magazine’s core editorial themes to make space for stories surrounding minorities and other lesser heard voices.

On a similar note, Ms Wain has also announced a partnership with the National Federation of Builders to create the Women in Construction: Roadmap for Industry initiative which addresses the barriers that the sector currently has for women, and the actions required to overcome them.

Ms Wain now plans to follow up these effort by working alongside City and Guilds to design both online and onsite training programmes which will allow participants to earn CSCS qualifications, which are highly sought after from construction employers.