Sometimes a diary clash really can be a nuisance. Last Thursday a prior appointment in London prevented me from being among those welcoming Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall to the Civic Offices.

I had to leave that pleasure to my Deputy, Councillor Russell Holland. As a council, we were of course very pleased to show the Duchess our plans for the regeneration of the town centre and the progress we’re making on building a new museum and art gallery.

However, the most important reason she was here was to mark the 175th anniversary of the founding of modern Swindon as a railway town, which every visitor to the station will now be reminded of thanks to the magnificent plaque on the forecourt that she unveiled.

The visit was an important reminder that Swindon was, and remains, a place where we make things, and that manufacturing is a key part of our history and our future.

It’s why one of the four priorities for the council is to deliver educational opportunities that lead to the right skills in the right places, because if we’re going to keep and attract manufacturing businesses and high-tech companies, we need them to have a pool of properly-qualified people in Swindon that they can employ.

It was no different back in the heyday of the railway works – without the genius of people like Sir Daniel Gooch and the army of talented engineers and skilled workers who lived and worked here, very little would have been achieved.

All of those men – and back in the day engineering was generally an exclusively male preserve, something which is happily changing – learned their trades and skills either as apprentices or in other practical ways.

It’s why I led on the creation of the University Technical College on part of the old railway works site. It will help provide that pool of suitably-skilled workers in the future. If we are going to compete nationally and internationally, we must look beyond purely academic courses for our young people and equip them with practical skills too.

We must also give them proper apprenticeship opportunities. These are a key part of the Government’s agenda, and also here at the council. One of our key aims is to increase the number of local businesses employing young people as an apprentice from 15% to 20%, and the council itself has pledged to seek to employ 58 apprentices over the next year.

Our housing team in particular has been very successful in recent years in giving apprentices qualifications and practical experience that have started them on a proper career path, and this is something we fully intend to build on.