SLIM Alliance Papers

The half-day event was held at South Devon College in February 2013 and was well attended by stakeholders from around the region. Delegates heard presentations from the public and private sectors offering a range of perspectives on Marine Renewables, followed up by the opportunity to exchange feedback in discussion groups.

The report consists of three sections. The first gives background context to the region’s involvement in Marine Renewables from 2009 onwards, which culminated in the South West Marine Energy Park initiative at the centre of new developments. The next section covers the workshop’s programme, including summaries of stakeholders’ presentations. The final section provides feedback from discussion groups, recommendations from the final plenary session, and delegates’ thoughts on the workshop itself.

The South West’s particular interest in the Marine sector was established in 2009, when the region was designated as the UK’s first Low Carbon Economic Area with a remit for the Marine sector by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. In 2010, Semta (the Sector Skills Council for Science, Engineering and Manufacturing Technologies) produced a report for the South West Regional Employment and Skills Partnership reviewing low carbon manufacturing skills for the region. The report highlighted offshore wind as one of the industry sectors active in low carbon manufacturing which had the strongest potential for job creation. Beyond Semta’s sector ‘footprint’, a fuller range of jobs in the wind, wave and tidal sectors had been identified in a 2008 report to the British Wind Energy Association.

The South West Employment and Skills Partnership (ESP) Alliance met on 21 June 2012 in partnership
with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Federation of Small Businesses
(FSB) and Business West in an event entitled, Your Route to Skills.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face many issues in accessing training and other skills
provision. The event was aimed at businesses in the region, and also attracted a range of stakeholders
with an interest in the skills agenda including training providers, business organisations and
educationalists. With a series of speakers, case studies and some signposting, the event aimed to help
SMEs help themselves and each other to find and access the support to grow their businesses and aid
economic recovery.

The ESP combined forces with BIS as part of the national BIS Employer Engagement consultations
currently taking place across the country. The event, therefore, had a clear focus on raising awareness
of the importance of skills, informing business about the opportunities and how to get involved and
provided a forum for discussion on what is working and what is not as a feed into the BIS consultation.
This Summary Report explores the issues that emerged from the meeting and is structured in two
parts: Section 2 is taken from the presentations while Section 3 details the issues raised in the
subsequent discussion based on the BIS consultation.

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Your Route to Skills Event - Somerset College, 21^st June 2012

Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) have been created ‘to provide the clear vision and strategic leadership to drive sustainable private sector-led growth and job creation in their area.’ On 6 April 2011, Gloucestershire LEP was launched on the basis of a proposal that included among its four priorities ‘connecting education and skills with the needs of business and the local economy – ensuring the ready supply of talent and, and attracting and retaining young people’. Recognising the significant manufacturing presence in the area, Gloucestershire LEP has established an ‘Advanced Engineering and Manufacturing’ Group.

This paper has been written at the behest of this group, to support efforts by local partners to foster closer connections between education and skills providers and manufacturing employers and to ensure that that this highly productive sector has access to the skills it needs. It has been written in advance of a workshop on 24 April 2012, which will focus on identifying the employment and skills challenges facing the industry and good practice in promoting STEM learning and progression into the industry.

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Manufacturing & STEM Skills in Gloucestershire Event - Somerset College, 24^th April 2012

At the onset of the recession, partners across the South West agreed that, as well as mitigating the worst impacts of the crisis, we needed to focus on creating the conditions for recovery and enabling local businesses to grow out of recession. We agreed that post-recession growth would look different to that seen beforehand – export-oriented, green and re-balanced away from the public and financial services. Unfortunately, the recovery has been delayed beyond most of our expectations and decisive action is still needed to help the UK emerge from recession.

The Government’s investment in next-generation, superfast broadband should be seen in this context - as an investment in a vital part of our national economic infrastructure, bringing us up to the standards of the best internationally.

In 2009, NESTA estimated that providing universal superfast broadband could directly create 600,000 new jobs, with £18 billion added to UK GDP and larger indirect effects¹. Earlier research, conducted in 2003², estimated that the growth in broadband would result in UK GDP being £21.9bn per annum higher in 2015 than it would otherwise have been; in annual UK fixed investment being around £8bn per annum higher than would otherwise have been the case, and annual government borrowing being around £13bn per annum lower.

These estimates are rough. No one knows for certain how people will use superfast broadband, what business innovations it will give rise to or the scale of the productivity improvements that will result. We have many clues, which we explore in this report. However, the main thing we do know is that a dramatic improvement in connectivity will open an array of new possibilities for businesses and that those that use it effectively will have a considerable advantage over those that remain without.

It is for this reason that four Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in South West England³ are seeking Growth and Innovation Funding: to drive economic growth by delivering the skills needed by businesses to maximise the advantages that superfast broadband can bring⁴.

So what are these potential advantages? And what skills will be required to grasp them?

1 Getting up to speed: making superfast broadband a reality, NESTA Policy Briefing, January 2009
2 The Economic Impact of a Competitive Market for Broadband, Centre for Economics and Business Research ltd, November 2003.
3 Cornwall & IoS, Heart of the South West, West of England and Gloucestershire & Herefordshire.
4 Draft GIF Application

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Profiting from Superfast Broadband Event - Somerset College, 26^th March 2012

This briefing paper has been written at the request of the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership (HoSW LEP) and the South West Employment and Skills Partnership (SWESP). Its purpose is to inform a discussion about how the partners who make up the LEP can support manufacturing in Devon and Somerset. This discussion will start with a workshop on 14 November. Organised by the HoSW LEP, the SWESP, Engineering Employers Federation and Semta Sector Skills Councils (SSC), the workshop will focus on identifying and responding to employment and skills challenges facing the industry. This paper explores these issues and is provided as a briefing in advance of the event.

The following documents are available for download:

Supporting manufacturing in the Heart of the South West - Executive Summary
Supporting manufacturing in the Heart of the South West