Countrywide Surveying Services hires 27 trainees via Trainee Surveyor Programme

11 November 2024

Countrywide Surveying Services (CSS), a leading provider of property risk management, valuations and home surveys in the UK, has announced the hiring of 27 trainees via its AssocRICS Trainee Programme.

The firm’s AssocRICS training academy has established a trusted pathway, successfully guiding in excess of over 600 trainees to become fully qualified residential surveyors. The academy is led by Sam Holton, Head of Trainee Development, and Sarah Chalmers-Stevens, Head of Professional Development at CSS.

The cohort is made up of property professionals with four or more years of property related experience including Estate Agency and Domestic Energy Assessors, plus a number of graduates with RICS accredited degrees. The course is delivered through a combination of virtual classroom lectures, practical on-site learning and assessment centres.

In this ever-changing residential surveying landscape, trainees are aligned to understand a variety of valuation methodologies, technological and virtual data resources and building pathology requirements.

Rebecca Freeman, Director of Field Operations at Countrywide Surveying Services, commented:

“I remain extremely proud of what our academy has to offer within the residential surveying space. Due to the nature of the type of work we provide across the property industry when it comes to valuations we are able to enable our trainees with a huge variety of learning. This expands across not only the standard mortgage lending criteria but also more specialist lending such as New Build, Leasehold and of course the virtual valuation space to include desktop valuations and appropriate expertise when it comes to analysing data.

With a cohort of mentors who have experience spanning more than 10 years plus of practical experience, our trainees experience the best of both the academic learning, alongside that of the onsite practical experience. What’s also pleasing to see is that despite the industry generally only attracting 18% of females into residential surveying, our statistics are now in the region of 30% females which is testament to the cultural experience we are providing around inclusivity not to mention our wide variety of flexible working policies available.

"Many of our past trainees have progressed through our Leadership Development Programme and have gone on to secure roles in Regional Management, Property Risk and Technology and Innovation, in fact this statistic is almost 70% of those who have qualified with us here at Countrywide have gone on to secure these more senior positions.

“We retain an unwavering commitment to attracting and developing residential surveyors to maintain and increase capacity for the sector and the calibre of our trainees, and their ability is ever present in their exceptional delivery of quality to our clients and customers.”