Lord Ravensdale emphasises the pivotal role pan-regional partnerships can play to address skills gaps

Lord Ravensdale, cross-bench peer and Chair of the Midlands Engine Security Taskforce, addressed the importance of pan-regional partnerships and how collaboration can bridge the skills gap, in a debate at the House of Lords.

He began by discussing the size of the challenge to recruit high-skilled jobs in the energy sector:

“I deal with skills challenges on the ground everyday. I work in business, my industry, the nuclear industry, is undergoing a significant period of growth. Currently we have about 83,000 people in the sector, but in order to meet growing demands and to replace people leaving the sector – we need to fill around 40,000 new jobs by 2030.

In my business in Derby we have some really specialised skills which are difficult to find on the market and are really acting as a break on our ability to grow our business and to contribute towards the government’s economic growth goals, as well as national goals for clean power and defence of the realm. For example the software engineers and process engineers are very difficult to find.

The Minister will be aware of the Nuclear Skills Taskforce and the resulting Nuclear strategic plan for skills which are a great first step in being able to meet these opportunities. In that vein I welcome the bill and the joined-up approach across the country, in particular better considering regional needs. I wish to really concentrate my remarks on how Skills England will work on the regional perspective. Now firstly, my Lords, local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) which were set up as part of the original act which my noble Lords refer to.

I was grateful to the Minister who spoke at our recent cross-bench meeting where I raised this issue. Overall LSIPS have been a really welcome development in helping to meet local skills needs and to provide that join-up between local business and skills providers. But we have found that there have been limited join-up between the local and the national level which can result in them being generic and overlapping in some cases. So can the Minister please provide more detail on how Skills England will help set the strategic direction for LSIPs and other potential reforms to these plans.

Lord Ravensdale went on to discuss the importance of pan-regional partnerships and referenced the upcoming Energy Security White Paper:

In the Midlands, where I live, we are now bless with 2 combined Authorities: the EMCCA and WMCA, but these only cover a relatively small part of the region. Now the question for me is how Skills England will operate at a regional level and deliver for those areas that aren’t covered by combined authorities.

Part of the answer for me is the regional partnerships such as the Midlands Engine and the Northern Powerhouse. For example, I am currently chairing the Midlands Engine Energy Security Taskforce which is all about how the region can seize the opportunity of the energy transition.

One of our offers to Government is to work right across the region to collaborate, to test the in-scale skills hub approach to address the technical gap in the region’s clean energy and manufacturing sectors in a way the markets currently can’t. Following a meeting with Baroness Barran we are setting up a regional Nuclear Skills Hub which will start to reap some of those benefits.

These hubs could provide specialised training, school level engagement, foster innovation, support workforce transition and really encourage collaboration between academia, industry and local communities, leveraging the regions universities and colleges. I’d be grateful if the Minister could say how Skills England might work at a broader regional level to ensure that this overall skills picture and demand is being considered.

The debate was the second reading on the ‘Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education Bill’.

In response Baroness Smith of Malvern, Minister for Skills said:

‘The noble lord Ravensdale talked about regional flexibility and the excellent work that he identified. 

Skills England will collaborate with combined authorities as well as with equivalent bodies and places which have devolution deals but where there is no combined authority.’

The debate was the second reading on the ‘Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education Bill’.

Watch the full clip here

To learn more about the Midlands Engine Observatory’s work on LSIPs and Skills, click here