SLIM Publications

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.

This paper examines the extent to which the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area retains its graduates, and what more could be done to connect local businesses with ‘locally-produced’ graduate talent. More specifically, the research attempts to answer the following questions:

• How successful is the Heart of the South West in retaining its graduates?
• What policies and programmes support graduate retention in the area and how
successful are they? and
• What more needs to be done to support this agenda?

The report was commissioned by Devon County Council on behalf of the Heart of the South West Employment and Skills Network. The remainder of this Executive Summary is structured around these three questions.

This report has been prepared by the Marchmont Observatory at the University of Exeter as the UK Partner in the New skills for green jobs. A case for a more gender inclusive labour market? Project.

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

This report was commissioned by Devon County Council on behalf of the Productive Skills for Devon and Somerset (PS4D+S) network as part of a series of reports examining the progress being made across the Heart of the South West (HotSW) area towards employment and skills priorities.

The network was interested in examining ‘measures, projects and interventions that had proven effective in encouraging the take-up of STEM skills among young people’ (aged 11 to 18) in the context of on-going review of their spending priorities.

The findings of the report were presented to the network at their 23rd April 2012 meeting.

This focus of this report is on:
• Measures that providers in the HotSW and elsewhere have taken to effectively engage employers to promote interest in STEM learning from ages 11 to 18;
• Gathering perspectives from partners on steps that could be taken within the HotSW Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) to increase the level or the depth of employer engagement in the STEM agenda.

This is set within a description of its policy context and an analysis of data on take-up of STEM subjects in the local area.

Employer engagement in STEM Learning in the Heart of the South West - Executive Summary

You may also be interested in our previous STEM work