Vision for pan-Humber renewables training centre revealed

A VISION to develop a multi-million pound renewables training centre to bridge the skills gap across the Humber region is being revealed today.

Businesses and local authorities across East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire will be called on to help deliver the project, which is aimed at ensuring people are equipped with the skills relevant to access the jobs market linked to the offshore wind industry.

This is just one of 36 formal recommendations after a year-long independent review commissioned by the Humber Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) which took a long-term look at the challenges, issues and barriers businesses face in respect of skills.

Compiled by the Humber LEP’s Skills Commission, the research programme took evidence from energy firms, blue-chip businesses, schools, colleges, training providers, voluntary organisations, local authorities, emergency services and dozens of small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The recommendations include a call to create a Humber Careers Hub which would be charged with collating information, advice, training and guidance to become a single reference point for industry, students and jobseekers.

Chaired by former college principal Nic Dakin, MP for Scunthorpe, the Skills Commission recommends in its report “Lifting the Lid: The Humber Skills Challenge” that the Employment and Skills Board be responsible for making sure the region is equipped to match the employment needs of the coming years.

He said: “Between now and 2020 there will be more than 65,000 job opportunities available across the Humber region – opportunities which everyone in business, politics and education wants to see filled by people from across East Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire.

“There are a huge number of opportunities for young people who are leaving school now through to those who are currently studying in Year 7.

“If these jobs were available now we would have the numbers of people available but they would be insufficiently skilled to fill them. If we do not act now, we will be in the same position by 2020 and will have to import skills and expertise while our own school leavers and young adults continue to languish in unemployment.

“However, we do have the best of everything in the Humber in isolated pockets, the problem is that it doesn’t exist consistently everywhere.

“By working together, we can get everywhere in the Humber up to the standard of the best examples. A pan-Humber training centre would become the epicentre of this reform which will transform the region.  We need to do this if we are to realise the huge opportunities that are within our grasp.” 

The report recommends that the LEP’s new Employment and Skills Board, which will meet for the first time next week, takes charge of skills issues across the Humber, including the delivery of the training centre and the careers hub, and directs Government skills spending through the Hull & Humber City Deal.

Jobs will be available across all business sectors; including transport, health, construction, retail, manufacturing, education, the services industry, finance, publishing, engineering and communications – the majority of which would flow from the renewables industry if a series of major projects are approved.

These job opportunities will be made up roughly 50/50 between replacements for retirees and new positions created through projects such as Green Port Hull and the Able Marine Energy Park on the south bank of the Humber.

Mr Dakin said: “Traditionally, schools and colleges are fantastic at delivering what is asked of them, but too often business is not clear enough about its needs and so it is the demands of national government that are given priority and responded to by education. 

“The Humber, more than any other area of the UK, sits on the edge of great things if it can respond to this challenge.

“It is well placed through its history and its geography to seize the opportunities presented today by renewable energy amongst other things.  To do this it needs to maximise its strengths and, more than anything else, deliver on skills.”

The recommendations also include that a Skills Investment Fund, matched by private investment, be created in a move to incentivise skills investment.