Metro-mayors must be the ones to develop local skills improvement plans (LSIPs), Lord Adonis has said today.

Speaking at the House of Lords on day one of the committee stage of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, former education minister Lord Adonis praised the current mayors, including Sadiq Khan, Andy Street and Andy Burnham, and raised concerns over banning them from leading on LSIPs. 

He said: “The one body specifically banned from producing these local skills improvement plans are the mayors. And the reason, it turns out, is because they’re not employers. Well, I mean as a definitional thing, they’re obviously not employers, but they are the people who have the capacity to generate real activity and engagement by the employers and colleges in a really serious way. 

“They should be tasked with this mission, but instead, they are totally isolated from the process on the grounds they’re not employers.”

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: 

• Give 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. 
• Pilot “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 the most effective models of employer representation are created before wider rollout.

Lord Adonis also questioned the pilot LSIPs, and said when he asked whether or not LSIPs would be effective, he had been surprised to see the pilots were yet to go ahead.

He said: “It turns out, my lords, that these local skills improvement plans are to be piloted in six to eight trailblazer areas…These trailblazers are backed by £4 million in revenue funding, all of which will go to the consultants who will be charged with writing these plans, and bids were being sought by 25 May.

“So maybe the minister could tell us how many bids have been entered by 25 May, some description of who they are, when they’re going to start and what indication there is that these are going to be coherent, because I don’t want to detain the committee unduly, but all of the indications as to who the bodies are, reference bodies that don’t exist at the moment.” 

Other speakers also raised concerns over the government’s plans for LSIPs. Lord Aberdare said learners needed to have a voice in the development of LSIPs.

He said: “It’s essential that learners should have a voice in the development of LSIPs in their own areas,” adding: “I hope the noble minister will be able to tell us something about how the planned trailblazers or pilots will be used to develop guidance. Ideally, they will blaze a series of trails to respond to varying local conditions and circumstances, different local areas will rightly have to take different approaches, led by different employer representative bodies. 

“There may be many areas where Chambers of Commerce do not have the right focus or qualities to lead the local partnership, and others where the plan would ideally be built on existing work by LEPs, skills advisory partnerships, and other such groups. What I think is needed is guidance on general principles for successful LSIPs to follow. But what is absolutely not needed in my view is any sort of overly prescriptive one-size-fits-all approach to such bodies.”

Lord Storey, meanwhile, said the notion of local skills improvement plans seemed “eminently sensible” - but questioned who should put them together. He said: “Employees that want to run their business, they want to be sitting around tables, taking evidence and consulting with people, they’ve got jobs to do. They want to make their businesses successful.

“Essentially, it should be the other way round. Whoever’s doing this should be consulting with employers not asking employees to do this work.”