The Government has announced a £4.5 million fund for England’s biggest cities and colleges to work together to boost adult skills across the country.
The City Skills Fund will be available to the eight core cities in England, plus London, and their surrounding local enterprise partnership (LEP) areas.
Each city will receive around £500,000 to address skills priorities across their regions. The City Skills Fund will help cities and LEPs work with local colleges and independent providers to boost the provision of skills needed by local employers. The Government is also challenging cities to develop apprenticeship city hubs which will help local businesses, particularly small businesses, to take on apprentices.
Cities Minister Greg Clark said: ‘The City Skills Fund will see our core cities working in partnership with local colleges to ensure employers in their area have access to people with the right skills to help them thrive and grow. We are giving cities the chance to build the skills they think are most important. This is another example of how the Government is putting cities back in charge of their own economic destiny, allowing them to drive growth and create jobs.’
The City Skills Fund will be used to:
· Facilitate more effective cooperation and partnership between the business-led LEPs and core cities working with local colleges and independent providers.
· Develop a jointly agreed set of skills priorities for the core city area so that there is a shared understanding of the local skills requirements to meet business needs and to stimulate growth.
· Set out how the core cities, LEPs, colleges and independent providers will work together to implement their priorities.
· Set out how partners will work together to ensure that employer and individual demand in priority skills areas is realised.
In December, the Government announced that England’s largest cities outside London – Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol, Sheffield, Leeds and Nottingham – will be offered new investment as part of a series of bespoke ‘City Deals’. This will free cities from Whitehall control in a number of areas, allowing them to drive growth in their region. The City Skills Fund is part of the City Deal being offered to each city.
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