The Local Government Association has today launched a
ground-breaking new online resource to map national employment
and skills provision in every local authority in England.
The resource, designed in partnership with Research
Matters, identifies almost 50 nationally run employment and
skills programmes managed and commissioned by government
departments and agencies, delivered over different boundaries by
multiple providers.
The resource provides examples for what this means for three
local authority areas, and contains an interactive map, which can
be used by all local authorities to display what provision is
available to their local area, and where known, the provider
delivering it.
A key challenge of the employment and skills system is that there
are so many schemes. This can make provision difficult to
navigate for residents and businesses, especially as there is no
single local organisation responsible for co-ordinating the
provision. This resource goes some way to helping to make this
clearer.
The LGA, which represents local authorities in England and Wales,
aims to help the sector maximise employment and skills support
currently available as well as develop a partnership between
local and national government to design a system that works for
all communities.
Cllr Kevin Bentley, Chair of the LGA’s People and Places Board:
“All too often the skills and employment system can be complex
and fragmented.
“This is an important resource which supports local authorities
to better understand and navigate employment and skills provision
in their local areas.
“We also want it to help improve connections between local and
national government on how to collaborate on existing provision
within local areas and to plan future provision.
“Helping our residents retrain and get into work is critical to
building back better from the crisis into recovery and levelling
up our communities.
“The LGA wants to support councils to make the best of this
investment and work with the Government to ensure future
provision connects up easily and quickly to support our residents
and businesses.
“Throughout the pandemic, local government has been trusted to
co-ordinate employment, training and business support for their
local areas. Councils want to build on this as we help our
communities recover, and an important way of doing that is
working with government, businesses and other partners to make
the most of vital national employment and skills support.”
Ends
Notes to editors
The full online toolkit can be found on the LGA website: LGA: Mapping national
employment and skills provision
The project identifies 22 nationally contracted programmes, and
described a further 27 programmes that are not contracted. It
describes some individual programmes, for instance Access to Work
which are contracted or delivered in multiple ways which will
result in multiple providers and arrangements. The LGA will
review the list of national programmes in 2022. To the best of
our knowledge all programmes are correct as of April 2021.
Research Matters, who helped produce the resource, are a
strategic business research agency based in York. They work with
a wide range of organisations to deliver a reliable fact and
evidence base, insightful context and competitive intelligence to
help them make informed decisions.
Local employment and
skills recovery learning hub | Local Government Association
