The document discusses the importance of local devolved skills budgets and strategies in addressing skill gaps in urban labor markets. It highlights the need for flexible management of labor market policies, showcasing successful examples from cities like Birmingham and Sheffield. Recommendations include enhancing local governance, employer engagement, and evaluation plans to improve employment outcomes and better align skills with local market needs.

1. Acting on skills locally
Devolved skills budgets and
building skills strategies
Naomi Clayton
June 2015

2. Cities matter to the UK economy

3. But the variation is stark and growing

4. …meaning that more people are at risk of getting
trapped in low wage, low skill jobs
The shape of urban labour markets is changing
too…

5. An appropriate mix of interventions to raise skills
and demand for skills

6. Lack of flexibility to respond to local labour
market issues (1)

7. Lack of flexibility to respond to local labour
market issues (2)
Local flexibility in the management of labour market policy: an international
comparison

8. Why is local flexibility important?
Local flexibility in the management of labour market policy: an international
comparison
Improved policy
learning &
adaptation
Stronger
partnership
building
More
innovation
Greater
resource
targeting

9. City Deals and Growth Deals enabled greater
flexibility and experimentation

10. And to some extent enabled local partners to
respond to local labour market demand

11. From partnerships to labour market
intelligence…
Partnership
arrangements
Employer
engagement
Labour
market
intelligence
As part of Birmingham’s Skills Compact, nine colleges have
agreed to work closely with employers, schools and other
training providers to align careers advice, learning and
preparation for work.
In Sheffield, 15 new apprenticeship frameworks have been
created that respondents feel meet local business needs
more effectively than national apprenticeship
frameworks.
The Education Trust in Stoke uses a ‘red-amber-green’
framework to rank which skills are in highest demand.

12. …And from shared objectives to performance
management and evaluation
Performance management
& evaluation
Alignment
between
delivery partners
Shared
objectives
Most respondents felt they had a clear understanding of
local employment and skills priorities. Yet, the extent to
which these objectives are shared and aligned across
partners at the functional economic area varies.
The Greater Manchester and Sheffield CR deals stand out
because they do include devolved responsibilities for
adult skills funding and provision.
The scale of the Manchester Working Well and London
Working Capital pilots and robust nature of evaluations
accompanying them offer the potential to significantly improve
the evidence base around what works in getting the harder to
help back into employment.

13. Going forward
• Local partners:
• Ensure strong governance models are in place that reflect the scale of the
functional economy and hold partners to account;
• Continue to explore effective ways to engage with local employers and
directly involve them in provision;
• Develop local analytical capacity and capability, making use of labour market
intelligence to its full extent and;
• Implement robust evaluation plans where funding has been secured to
deliver pilot programmes.
• National government:
• Greater coordination of policy and resources at the national level to support
innovation and experimentation
• Ensuring availability of labour market intelligence data on programme
outcomes;
• Setting frameworks for performance management and evaluation and;
• Ensuring that local programmes are not duplicated by equivalent centrally-
led programmes.

14. Questions?
Naomi Clayton
Centre for Cities
June 2015
@Naomi_Cities