The first areas to receive local skills improvement plans have been announced by the government today.

The first eight “trailblazer” areas are the West of England, Cumbria, South Yorkshire, Kent, Leicestershire, Tees Valley, Lancashire and Sussex, and they will be backed by £4 million of funding.

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The plans are a crucial part of the government’s new Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, but have already attracted much criticism from sector leaders and peers in the House of Lords. 

Local skills improvement plans: how they’ll work

The proposals for LSIPs were set out in the Skills for Jobs White Paper in January and include: 

• Giving employers a central role working with further education colleges, other providers and local stakeholders to develop new “local skills improvement plans”, which shape technical skills provision so that it meets local labour market skills needs.
• Piloting “local skills improvement plans” in trailblazer local areas, exploring an approach where they are led by accredited Chambers of Commerce and other business representative organisations, in collaboration with local providers, and engage employer and provider groups to ensure that the most effective models of employer representation are created before wider rollout.

Lords voice concerns 

On the second day of the committee stage in the House of Lords today, several peers raised concerns about the plans. Baroness Morris of Yardley, a former education secretary, asked what would happen to the “areas no one wants”.

She said: “I’m not sure what happens to any geographical area that no one wants, that’s not managed to get a place in any partnership. There’s very often left-out areas. There’ll be some areas that are really, really popular, and everyone wants them in their area, and there will be some that are really tough and they’re really challenging, and no one will want them.

“I’m not sure how all that is going to be sorted out and I think what I’d be looking for is keeping that idea of, ‘Look, don’t force the same on everybody,’ but within a much stronger framework than we have at the moment of guidance and a clearer idea of process.”

Baroness Greengross called for independent learning providers to be included in the plans, and said: ”[They] provide high-quality courses that fill skills shortages in their communities. Unlike other providers, they’re not given equal access to funding. For example, in the North East of England, they are, in many cases, filling the gaps in terms of skill straining but don’t have the same access to public funding contracts as non-private education providers.

“These training providers, where they meet the appropriate quality standards, should be included local skills improvement plans.”

Lord Watson raised concerns over the late publishing of the trailblazer areas, and said: “The bill does not specify what constitutes a local area in terms of the geographic footprints of the LSIPs.

“Indeed, employer representative bodies are being invited to define their own localities for the purpose of skills planning, and even in places where our local authority or metropolitan combined authority forms a well recognised functional economic area with a long history of collaboration, there’s no suggestion, no less a guarantee, that new local skills improvement plan proposals will follow existing economic footprints.” 

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