Great Yarmouth Skills and Employability Strategy 2024-2029

Great Yarmouth's learning and skills provision meets the needs of all our residents and employers and plays a role in reducing local inequalities and deprivation by harnessing our residents' potential and the opportunities available. We foster ambition and aspiration at every level, with paths through learning, qualifications, and re-skilling creating secure and rewarding jobs

Skills are absolutely central to social, economic and community renewal. Our collaborative work brings together the Council, colleges, businesses and academics as the Great Yarmouth Skills Taskforce.

• our residents and communities recognise that skills, qualifications, aspirations and a traditional reliance on certain forms of employment can be limited their employment opportunities and earning potential
• our skills and qualifications providers, including schools and colleges, recognise the need to match skills and qualifications with the needs of our employers and growth industries in order to enable residents to take advantage of local opportunities - providing the right people, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time
• our employers recognise that that they also have a key role to play in inspiring, attracting, retaining and developing those starting or re-starting jobs in a rapidly-evolving labour market, including hard-to-reach groups and those that are furthest from the workplace - for example, those lacking basic experience and work skills

The Strategy has been designed through an extensive dialogue with the Great Yarmouth Skills Taskforce, which represents our key employers and skills providers. It includes best practice - what's worked well elsewhere - new data and analysis, new and established partnerships and new research. The following diagram summarises the process through which this was all brought together:

The specially-commissioned research focused on two areas:

• identifying and describing the local barriers that our residents face in getting the skills and qualifications that that lead to secure and rewarding employment and the practical steps that we can take to tackle these
• identifying which skills at which level our local employers need now and in the future, where the gaps are and what needs to be done to ensure that the local skills system provides the right support at every learning stage

Barriers for residents: The first piece of research found that, although barriers to accessing skills and employment varied between different groups of residents - those who aren't work-ready, those who are work-ready and those who are in work but 'under-skilled' - four clear themes emerged. These are explored in more detail in Appendix A, Local challenges and opportunities, alongside summaries of the local labour market, economy and skills system:

• a lack of motivation to take up skills provision and employment opportunities
• underlying health conditions that make accessing skills and employment more difficult
• a lack of 'basic' skills - including maths and English - 'digital' and 'soft' skills alongside a lack of awareness of local skills development opportunities
• practical barriers to accessing skills and employment, such as childcare and transport costs

Issues facing employers: The second piece of research found that different industries - such as manufacturing, construction and healthcare - have very specific challenges relating to recruiting, retaining and developing suitably-skilled workers. These are summarised in Appendix B, Delivering the right skills mix for our labour market, which also identifies cross-cutting requirements that apply to most employers, such as 'basic' and 'soft' skills.

The Skills and Employability Strategy has been carefully designed to support the Borough Council's Economic Growth Strategy and Corporate Plan. It also reflects the Government's Skills for Jobs policy, the Local Skills Improvement Strategy (LSIP) and the new Norfolk County Council strategy for adult education.

It also complements the work of the Great Yarmouth Health and Wellbeing Partnership and the Great Yarmouth Locality Strategy. 'Low Educational attainment, skills and aspirations' is one of four priority themes in the Locality Strategy, which aims to improve youth education and skills pathways, attainment and create career ambition.

The Great Yarmouth Community Hub operating model has the potential to integrate skills and employability into wider community support, including healthy living, wellbeing and other Council and voluntary outreach.

Information about our residents and communities, the local labour market, our local economy and local skills provision is provided in Appendix A, Local challenges and opportunities. A summary of our employers' key skills challenges is provided in Appendix B, Delivering the right skills mix for our labour market.

Section 3, Our strategic priorities brings together all the research and dialogue to help the Council and its partners design and provide projects and activities that lead to an improvement in local skills and employability for our residents and employers.

Section 4, Our call to action provides more detail about the three Strategic Priorities and sets out nine actions for the Council, its partners, providers, residents and employers to use to design projects and activities. The Skills and Employability Delivery Plan summarises these and our collective progress on those projects and activities.