Skills and Employment

In December 2006 Greater Manchester was designated as a City Strategy Pathfinder. This brought the ten local authority areas, as well as skills, Jobcentre Plus and health colleagues together in partnership for the first time to design and deliver services to enable more people to move off benefit and into work.

New Economy was the coordinating body for the City Strategy and has built up that employment and skills-related partnership working across Greater Manchester over the last three years.

In March 2010 New Economy’s Board was designated by Government as a statutory Employment and Skills Board (ESB). Greater Manchester was the first city region outside of London to be granted this status. New Economy has the role to define and develop this and will lead on the production of an Employment and Skills strategy. The Strategy will articulate GM’s employment and skills priorities and, with our Section 4 status, will influence the Skills Funding Agency’s spend.

In developing the Strategy we will need to engage and collaborate with a wide range of partners to understand workforce recruitment and skills needs in line with local and Greater Manchester economic priorities.

The strategy will set out our approach to supporting the development and delivery of the Better Life Chances, Higher Level Skills and Attracting and Retaining Talent priorities within the Greater Manchester Strategy by articulating how we will support:

• Young people to make the transition from education to employment
• Residents, particularly in our most deprived areas, move off benefits and into work
• Greater progression into Higher Education
• Businesses to increase their productivity by helping them recruit and develop a skilled workforce

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Invitation to Tender for a study into Low Carbon Skills in Wigan

Wigan is one of the 10 Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (AGMA) who have collectively made a commitment to reduce carbon emissions across GM by 30-50% by 2025. There is now substantial evidence that the challenge of moving Greater Manchester towards a low carbon future presents significant economic opportunity. The Greater Manchester ‘Mini Stern ‘report put a figure of £20 billion on that opportunity.

Wigan Council is developing its Economic Framework and the transition to a low carbon economy is a principle which underpins this document.

Wigan has a strong manufacturing and engineering base, and we recognise the value of this as a platform to diversify, especially through creating new low carbon manufacturing jobs. However, we need to build on our strengths and successes by improving skills development and business growth, especially in areas such as sustainable construction, environmental technologies and creative business in order to attract new business investment.

The research objectives are therefore:

• To clarify the current employment position and future projections for the Low Carbon sector in Wigan.
• To understand what skills sets and occupations will be necessary to ensure a transition to a Low Carbon borough
• To understand the existing skills provision available in Wigan and identification of gaps both for current demand and future projected demand for the sector.
• To understand how best to capitalise upon the skills and employment opportunities created through the Wigan and GM carbon reduction programmes, particularly in relation to the long term workless and existing workforce.

For further information, check out the study brief and the Invitation to Tender below:

• Study Brief – Wigan Low Carbon Skills (31kb)
• Invitation to Tender – Wigan Low Carbon Skills (34kb)
• Terms and Conditions (116kb)

For more information contact:
Steve Turner at New Economy:
Head of Carbon Economy
Commission for the New Economy
Churchgate House
56 Oxford Street
Manchester
M1 6EU

Tel: 0161 237 4417

Nick Uttley at New Economy:
Commission for the New Economy
Churchgate House
56 Oxford Street
Manchester
M1 6EU

Tel: 061 237 4630

Christine Bainbridge at Wigan Council:
Resource Procurement and Development Manager
Wigan Council
Gateway House
Standishgate
Wigan
WN1 1AE

Tel: 01942 828960