Online tool to map employment and skills provision

The Local Government Association has launched a ground-breaking new online resource to map national employment and skills provision in every local authority in England.

A key challenge of the employment and skills system is that there are so many schemes. This can make provision difficult to navigate for residents and businesses, especially as there is no single local organisation responsible for co-ordinating the provision.

Designed in partnership with Research Matters, the resource identifies almost 50 nationally run employment and skills programmes managed and commissioned by government departments and agencies, delivered over different boundaries by multiple providers. It highlights examples for what this means for three local authority areas, and contains an interactive map, which can be used by all local authorities to display what provision is available to their local area, and where known, the provider delivering it.

The LGA aims to help the sector maximise employment and skills support currently available as well as develop a partnership between local and national government to design a system that works for all communities.

Kevin Bentley, chair of the LGA’s People and Places Board: “All too often the skills and employment system can be complex and fragmented. This is an important resource which supports local authorities to better understand and navigate employment and skills provision in their local areas.

“We also want it to help improve connections between local and national government on how to collaborate on existing provision within local areas and to plan future provision.

“Helping our residents retrain and get into work is critical to building back better from the crisis into recovery and levelling up our communities. The LGA wants to support councils to make the best of this investment and work with the government to ensure future provision connects up easily and quickly to support our residents and businesses.

“Throughout the pandemic, local government has been trusted to co-ordinate employment, training and business support for their local areas. Councils want to build on this as we help our communities recover, and an important way of doing that is working with government, businesses and other partners to make the most of vital national employment and skills support.”