Building on 15 Years of Skills Progress in South West Wales

For many years the Regional Learning and Skills Partnership (RLSP) was very good at identifying what South West Wales needed. The harder part was turning that intelligence into training people could actually access.

That has changed significantly over the past four years. Funding through the Swansea Bay City Deal has allowed us to move beyond reports and recommendations and begin testing new courses, new delivery models and new ways of working with employers.

That shift has come at an important time for the region. Floating Offshore Wind, the Celtic Freeport and other major developments are changing the skills conversation, but the same principle still applies: training has to be available when employers need it and when people are ready to move into the jobs being created.

The RLSP exists to bring those conversations together. We provide the voice of industry into further and higher education, Welsh Government and Medr, which is responsible for funding and regulating the tertiary education and research sector in Wales. This is helping to build a clearer view of the skills South West Wales needs now and in the years ahead.

The difficulty is often one of timing. We may be involved in discussions about projects that will create jobs five or ten years from now, while young people leaving school or college are understandably looking for opportunities today.

Training providers also need enough certainty to develop courses, invest in equipment and recruit staff. Employers, meanwhile, need confidence that the workforce will be there when projects begin to move.

The Partnership helps to bring those different timescales together. Too often, several organisations can produce separate reports about the same sector or skills requirement without anyone drawing the findings into one clear regional picture.

Our role is to bring that intelligence together and set out which skills are needed, where they are needed and how provision should respond.

Over the past 15 years, the Partnership has achieved a great deal, but the last four years have been particularly important because direct access to Swansea Bay City Deal funding has allowed us to deliver some of the ideas we had previously been able only to recommend.

That funding has supported 35 projects and enabled us to work with colleges, training providers and individual organisations to pilot new approaches. It has also helped develop courses that did not previously exist anywhere else in the UK.

The results have shown what can happen when regional intelligence is matched with the ability to act. Young people and older workers have gained skills in areas where they can see a future career, while providers have been able to respond more directly to changing employer demand.

The next stage is to build on those results and make sure successful approaches are not confined to individual pilots.

Lifelong learning will be central to that work. Employers are increasingly recognising that recruitment alone will not meet all their workforce needs, particularly when skilled people are difficult to find.

For many businesses, the answer will involve developing existing employees, helping people move into new roles and enabling workers from other sectors to transfer their experience into growing industries. This is especially relevant to the green economy, where businesses may be moving into new markets and will need their workforces to move with them.

The opportunity is not limited to school leavers. People in their 30s, 40s and beyond may need to retrain as industries change, and there are now more routes through which they can continue learning while earning.

Training has to be delivered in a way that employers can use, however. This is particularly important for SMEs, which may not be able to release staff for several days or weeks at a time.

When we first began engaging with smaller businesses, participation could be difficult because employers were already receiving repeated requests for information and invitations to attend meetings. They simply did not have the time.

We adapted our approach, including moving more cluster meetings online. That reduced travel and time away from the business and helped more employers contribute to discussions, reports and regional statements of need.

The same flexibility is required from training providers. Courses may need to be delivered at different times, in shorter blocks or to groups of employers with similar requirements. Personal Learning Accounts helped encourage a different way of thinking about learning, including the ability to train while remaining in work, and there has been progress in bringing employers together so provision can be delivered when it suits them.

Retention is another important part of the picture. Transferable skills are valuable, but they also mean trained workers can move easily between employers and regions. That can be particularly difficult for SMEs, which may struggle to replace experienced staff quickly.

The response has to include building a stronger local pipeline and helping young people understand the range of careers that will be available in South West Wales. It must also give people who have left the region a reason to return as new opportunities develop.

Our immediate focus is on continuing conversations with the major businesses expected to deliver Floating Offshore Wind, the Celtic Freeport and other regional projects. Those discussions need to translate into clear requirements for colleges, training providers and employers.

We have shown that regional intelligence can lead to practical delivery when the right funding and partnerships are in place. The task now is to use that experience more widely, so new investment and new provision develop together rather than on separate tracks.

Jane talks about this and more on Episode 9 of the People & Skills podcast. Listen here: