The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) will be wound up within months, it has been confirmed, with the responsibility for running its national employer surveys passed on to the Department for Education.
The announcement was made by newly appointed apprentices and skills minister Robert Halfon in a written statement to Parliament today.
He confirmed that, following the announcement back in November that funding for UKCES was being withdrawn, “operational activities of UKCES will be concluded by the end of 2016”.
It is expected that the organisation will be “wound up in line with the end of its financial year, 2016-17”, Mr Halfon’s statement said, adding that the move would “allow the core adult skills participation budgets to be protected in cash terms”.
Extra work for the DfE
The national occupational standards will be transferred to another unnamed public sector organisation, while the management of the employer skills survey and the employer perspectives survey will be “moved into the Department for Education”, the statement said.
In 2014-15, 94 per cent of UKCES’s £40.9 million budget came directly from the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It was funded to offer guidance on skills and employment issues.
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