Thinktank calls for skills training overhaul and greater use of trading powers

Local authorities need to channel funding to areas of skills training that will most benefit long-term employment and economic growth, while the government should also allow councils to use their trading powers to create commercial opportunities, a leading thinktank has said.

Publishing its report We can work it out: local government and skills for economic recovery, the New Local Government Network argued that a “place-based approach is needed for employment and skills, with greater local economic activism by councils to steer funding towards particular sectors to stimulate new jobs”.

The network suggested that councils should be given greater democratic strategic control, by enabling them to vary the public subsidy for different skills training options based on current and future local economic needs.

Arguing for all operational functions to be devolved to local authorities, the NGLN also advocated streamlining some existing skills quangos – “to create an integrated and less cluttered employment and skills system” – and merging current national and regional skills agencies into one organisation, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

The NGLN also said the government should take forward its proposals in its Smarter Government white paper in relation to councils’ use of trading powers.

Report author Nick Hope said: “We must urgently and fundamentally reconstruct the architecture of the skills and employment system, to allow a far more devolved and flexible approach that is not based around programmes, age-categories and funding streams but around the specific needs of particular places, and, crucially, individuals.”