Local Skills Improvement Plans

The Government’s Skills for Jobs White Paper set out an ambitious employer-led approach aimed at making Further Education (FE) provision more responsive to local skills needs and ultimately local economic needs.

As part of this approach, Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) were introduced as a key part of the Government’s vision of an adult skills system where businesses are given a much stronger voice in local skills planning by working closely with FE providers, engaging effectively with local leaders and other stakeholders and forging a stronger and more dynamic partnership that will enable provision to be more responsive to the skills needs of employers in local labour markets.

Northamptonshire Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with Milton Keynes Chamber of Commerce and Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce are the Employer Representative Body (ERB) for the development of the LSIP for our region.

A copy of our Local Skills Improvement Plan was approved by the Secretary of State for Education and published mid-July. As part of the process we engaged with 418 organisations (including Local Authorities, FE and HE Sector, employers, employer facing organisations, Trade Bodies etc) through multiple engagement channels and collated results as follows:

A number of Draft Priorities and associated actions (summarised as):

Make better use of ICT/digital skills and changing technology
Help employers know where provision is, what it is and how to access it in a way they understand
Help employers understand how to make skills more relevant
Engage more with employers collaboratively
Map provision to jobs demand and skills issues
Provide accessible and flexible provision
Help build capacity to support delivery
Support knowledge transfer of what “green” and “decarbonisation” means and where the jobs are
Review the language of the skills system and “soft skills"

Click here to read the full report

Using information gathered from these events, the following were identified as priorities for the South East Midlands Region:

Green Skills
Improve understanding and communication between employers and training providers
Tackling the digital skills gap
Health and science capacity-building

As the Employer Representative Body our activities to March 2025 will be focused on engaging and working with employers, stakeholders, LEP and FE employer facing teams – these activities include:

Supporting employers to better articulate their skills needs and aggregate demand in a way that translates into stronger demand signals for providers.

Work with the LEP and external bodies to continue to gather up-to-date labour market intelligence
Support employers to take up apprentices, T Level Industry Placements and promote learning and training programmes for upskilling and reskilling existing employees and encouraging the use of apprenticeship levy transfers
Use relevant data and analysis to monitor progress that is being made on delivering the changes set out in the LSIP and to underpin any new actions or priorities that are identified through working with our LEP
Publish a progress report in 2024 and 2025 containing details of which of the actions/changes set out in the LSIP have been achieved
support the lead provider and partners in the delivery of the LSIF projects and galvanise local employers to do the same.

How can you get involved?

We will continue to engage with employers within the region to ensure that the LSIP remains relevant and reflects the skills needs of the region. We will support employers to better articulate their skills needs, work with external bodies to continue to gather up-to-date labour market intelligence and support employers to take up apprenticeships, T-Level Industry Placements and funded learning and training programmes for upskilling and reskilling of existing and new employees. Want to know more? Get in touch below.

Let’s work together.

Local Skills Improvement Plans

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