The UK Government has now officially approved the Mid Yorkshire Chamber’s proposal for the West Yorkshire Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs).
LSIPs are designed to put local employer need at the heart of skills development by helping businesses and employers engage with learning providers.
For the past 12 months, the MY Chamber team has been working with the West & North Yorkshire Chamber in partnership with the mayoral authority, local authorities, further and higher education and other training providers to engage with businesses to build on the existing data, strategic plans and collaborative working to bring together the key themes that will support skills growth for a 21st century Yorkshire workforce.
This work saw the Chambers’ LSIPs team engage with hundreds of businesses around the region via roundtables, surveys, questionnaires and other face-to-face meetings. This has led to the identification of a number of specific sectors on which each individual LSIP would focus.
For West Yorkshire, the sectors identified are:
- Construction
- Health and Social Care
- Digital
- Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing
- Creative industries
- Education
- Financial and Professional Services
- Low Carbon
- Logistics & Transport
The preparatory work has also identified areas for review, regarding potential enhancements to optimise access to skills development, leading to career progression or change. This lays the foundations for developing these in a range of formats.
Now that the Secretary of State has signed off the individual LSIP for West Yorkshire, the plans will move to implementation stage, setting in motion a process to make the most of the support and training options on offer, increasing the networks and ease with which businesses, staff and individuals can get to the right support.
The plan will run at least until early 2025 and will be reviewed annually. Meanwhile, both Chambers will continue to engage with employers and learning providers to deliver consistently up-to-date information.
Martin Hathaway, managing director of Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, said: “Local Skills Improvement Plans will help build on the excellent work delivered by learning providers around the region.
“Rather than rewrite curricula or re-invent the wheel, they will serve as convening points between employers, educators and trainers to ensure that regional economic need is both understood and met.
“One of the key learnings that our fieldwork has yielded is that employers want to have a relationship-based approach to learning providers, rather than simply a transactional one. LSIPs are now ideally placed to deliver just that.”
To find out more about the LSIPs and read the West Yorkshire report, please visit: https://www.wnychamber.co.uk/local-skills-improvement-plan/
