The new national body aims to unite business, training providers and unions to boost training and apprenticeship opportunities and deliver the economic growth promised in Labour’s manifesto.
More details are set to be announced in the months ahead but it will definitely spell the end for the Apprenticeship Levy, which has faced criticism for being too rigid in helping people get a foothold in a career.
Instead, the government is proposing a flexible ‘Growth and Skills Levy’ to give employers and workers more opportunities to get into work.
Following Skills England’s inclusion in July’s King Speech, Lizzie Crowley, skills adviser for CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, said: “Ensuring that we have the right skills, in the right place, at the right time is essential to unlocking UK-wide productivity and growth.
“There’s a clear and urgent need to connect and simplify the UK’s fragmented and complex skills landscape.”
She added that the new growth and skills levy must “encourage employers to invest more in training that will address workforce skills gaps”.
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The levy can be a tool to fill skill shortages at housing associations and trigger a move towards professionalisation of the sector, according to Sara Roberts, senior operating officer at Kingdom Academy.
The training organisation has been delivering housing qualifications for managers for the last 15 years, and for the last five years has also acted as a Chartered Institute of Housing-backed study centre.
It’s one of six training firms offering level two to five qualifications in the housing sector.
Roberts said plugging shortages on the managerial side of building homes is key to delivering more properties and the economic growth Labour – and the country – craves.
“There’s a real opportunity for Skills England to make a difference to the housing sector,” Roberts told Big Issue.
“Housing associations have to make a decision on what they spend their money on. Do they invest the money in the skills to get people qualified or do they spend their money somewhere else?
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“If they could use some of the government levy for approved qualifications that would really support the industry.”
While the majority of us have a home to call our own, working in a housing sector that has been under the cosh for failing to build enough homes or support tenants with repairs is not always an attractive proposition.
Offering more training through Skills England can help change that perspective as well as give people a clearer career path to stay within the sector, Roberts added.
“The strong growth that we want in building houses and housing associations doing that still needs the management structure to be able to work with tenants and make sure the rights are there and all that professionalisation,” she said.
“There are two gaps really: people being trained for today’s landscape and the other one is the same as construction in that we’ve got to get people into the housing sector. We’ve got to get people excited about a career in the housing sector.
Roberts added: “Giving people skills and training people is the quickest way for the country to grow. It takes time to build roads, communities and everything else but if you give people skills and training they have an opportunity to better themselves.”
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