Appendix 1

Plan for Jobs / Spending Review 2020 interventions
A summary of national funded initiatives and technical reforms

1. Supporting Jobs Interventions

The Kickstart Scheme

The Kickstart Scheme is a £2 billion national fund aimed at creating hundreds of thousands of new high-quality meaningful six-month roles. This includes wider support for participants to improve their longer-term employability.

The scheme is focused on young people aged 16-24 on Universal Credit. There is no cap on the number of placements. Employers / gateway organisations with placement opportunities must register with the Government.

Gateway organisation are employers with less than 30 opportunities. Funding is available for 100% of the relevant National Minimum Wage for 25 hours a week, plus associated employer contributions. The scheme is open until December 2021, with the last placements completing in June 2022.

Traineeships

Funding has been provided for 30,000 new Traineeships. They are a flexible education and training programme for 16-24 year olds (25 with and EHCP) that last between six weeks and 12 months with a high quality work placement lasting between 70 and 240 hours.

They support young people to develop the skills and experience needed to progress into an apprenticeship or sustainable training. Learners who have not achieved a GCSE grade 9 to 4 (equivalent to the former A*-C) in English and maths will need to continue to study these subjects and work towards achieving those qualifications as part of their study programme.

Digital skills will be incorporated into the programme when needed. Young people who already have a Level 3 qualification are now eligible for the programme if they require support to access apprenticeships or employment. An employer incentive scheme offers £1000 per trainee, for up to 10 trainees per region, for placements delivered up until 30 July 2021. 

Brighton & Hove is included in the South East Region, sharing an allocation of £6.5m – which is 10% of the national pot. The contract for traineeships will run to July 2023.

The Youth Offer

This is an expansion of the support the DWP offers young jobseekers, aged 18-24, in the Intensive Work Search group in Universal Credit. It involves a range of targeted support to help young people find lasting work.

Youth Employment Hub

Funding is available to local authorities through the DWP’s Flexible Support Fund to create bespoke employment youth hubs. These will provide an impartial one stop shop to support young adults towards employment.

High value courses for school and college leavers: a one-year offer for 18 and 19-year-olds

This offer was introduced for students aged 18-19 who intended to leave education and enter the labour market after the 2019 to 2020 funding year. If they cannot find employment or work-based training they will be funded for a further year from September 2020 for an additional programme of high value level 2 and 3 qualifications. This will be vocational or occupational study.

National Careers Service (NCS)

The NCS operates a centralised national platform with regional support for face to face interventions. Nationally, an additional £32m has been made available to the NCS to provide individualised support with careers and training. And £40m has been provided to fund private sector support with online 1:1 job finding for those who have been unemployed for less than three months.

The local NCS contract was awarded to CSK in 2018, who sub-contract to the Education and Development Trust. Priority is given to the following groups: 

· NEETS

· those unemployed for over 12 months

· low skilled adults

· single parents

· those aged 50+ who are unemployed or at risk of unemployment; and

· adults with special educational needs or who have a disability.

In November 2020 a new employability programme, ‘Making a Difference’, was launched across the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) region. Funded for three years, this supports both unemployed and economically inactive local people to prepare for moving into paid employment.

Lifetime Skills Guarantee

This was announced by the Prime Minister in September 2020. It’s a commitment to:

· upgrade FE colleges with capital investment

· expand apprenticeships

· fund free technical courses for adults equivalent to A level and extend digital boot camps;

· transform the adult learning funding system by introducing a flexible lifelong loan entitlement to four years of post-18 education to enable adults to retrain through high level technical courses.

National Skills Fund

The National Skills Fund will help adults to train and gain the valuable skills they need to improve their job prospects. It will support the immediate economic recovery and future skills needs by boosting the supply of skills that employers require.

National Skills Fund – Level 3 adult offer (Lifetime Skills Guarantee)

The offer is available from April 2021. It will deliver 400 fully funded courses with a wide range of skills in many jobs and sectors. It is for students aged 24+ to study for their first full work-focused qualification at level 3 – which is equivalent to a technical certificate or diploma – or two full A levels.

This offer will also be available to adults aged 19-23 alongside the 19-23 level 2 and level 3 legal entitlement. This will help them gain skills that are in high demand, and to either change jobs or find work in new sectors.

National Skills Fund - Skills Bootcamps (Lifetime Skills Guarantee)

This is currently only available in the Midlands and North of England. However, the city can bid for a Digital Skills Camp in 2021. Bootcamps complement the level 3 adult offer.

Skills bootcamps offer free, flexible courses of just 12-16 weeks. They give people the opportunity to build up sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer. The offer includes digital courses and bootcamps in technical skills such as welding, engineering and construction. 

National Skills Fund - Sector Based Skills Academies

This supports people receiving unemployment benefits. It helps them to retrain and prepare to apply for jobs in a different area of work.

The sector-based work academy programme is a locally based response administered by JobCentre Plus. It is designed to help meet employers’ immediate and future recruitment needs. A sector-based work academy can last up to six weeks and has three main components:

· pre-employment training

· a work experience placement relevant to the needs of the business and sector

· a guaranteed job interview.

Flexible Support Fund

This aims to increase capacity to support businesses making redundancies by:

· providing support for workers facing redundancy to access services

· removing barriers to work, for example travel expenses

· commissioning training for groups of people, and

· funding specific services and projects that move people closer to employment.

Enhanced work search support

Funding has been provided to double the number of work coaches within the DWP  in order to support clients with job search support. Job Entry Targeted Support is a new service funded by the DWP and delivered by Maximus, it is a light touch offer for Universal Credit claimants who have been unemployed for at least 13 weeks, who have not had access to support from a Jobcentre work coach or do not meet the criteria for other national provision.

Restart Scheme

The Restart scheme will give Universal Credit claimants who have been out of work for at least 12 months enhanced support to find jobs in their local area.

Apprenticeships

Employers can claim up to £2,000 as an incentive payment for apprentices hired between 1 August 2020 and 31 March 2021. This was introduced in August 2020

From April 2022, employers in construction will be able to front-load training for certain apprenticeship standards. It has been announced, without timelines, that Health and social care employers will follow.

The Government says it will ‘test approaches to supporting apprenticeships in industries with more flexible working patterns, including consideration of how best to support apprenticeship training agencies’.

From August 2022 employers who pay the Apprenticeship Levy will be able to redistribute unspent funds in bulk to SME’s through a new pledge function. Additional incentives are due to be introduced in 2021.

2. Creating Jobs Interventions

Public Sector decarbonisation

The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) provides grants for public sector bodies to fund energy efficiency and low carbon heat upgrade measures. The aim is to halve greenhouse gas emissions in 2022. The scheme closed on 11 January 2022. Projects have to be delivered by September 2022. BHCC has applied for the ‘consultancy’ element of this fund for six sites, but the fund is oversubscribed.

Social housing decarbonisation

This is a £50m demonstrator project in 2020-21 to help social landlords improve the least energy efficient social rented homes. Applications closed in November 2020. However, this fund has also been extended into 2021. There could be potential for a future bid. Outside of the funding the council is already planning a substantial programme of retrofit of council housing. This will have a potential impact on local job opportunities at delivery stage.

Decarbonisation Academy

This is a new approach to skills development through the Energy Systems Catapult (ESC). The Coast to Capital LEP have been successful in their bid to establish an academy in the LEP area. The academy will be funded for five years.

It will develop the skills and software needed to de-carbonise, incubate and innovate for scale-up across the country. The project includes two years of development followed by three years of delivery. Partners include both universities, the council and GB MET College.

Data and Digital

The National Data Strategy has been launched with a skills strand. To make the best use of data, the country must have a wealth of data skills to draw on. That means delivering the right skills through our education system, but also ensuring that people can continue to develop the data skills they need throughout their lives.

A working definition of data skills for the wider economy will be published. This will set out a clear distinction between data skills, digital skills and AI skills. It will also consider the benefits of providing information on pathways into data related careers.

Local projects - Coast to Capital will:

· continue to prioritise funding for partners to ensure comprehensive digital infrastructure coverage. This will allow businesses to respond to new ways of working and access future opportunities, such as those made available through 5G applications.

· Deliver a pipeline of projects related to digital infrastructure, aligning skills provision with industry specialisms to create new jobs.

2. Department for Education post 16 reforms

Post 16 technical and higher education reforms (White Paper - Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth)

The Post-16 Skills Plan in 2016 and Review of Post-18 Education and Funding in 2019, paved the way for major reforms of the technical education system in England. Take-up of higher technical education at levels 4 and 5 in England has been falling and employers are struggling to find the skilled workers they need. The government published the Skills for Jobs: Lifelong learning White Paper, a blueprint for the future, in January 2021. A place based approach to developing skills provision that meets local demand is introduced through Local Skills Improvement Plans. The white paper focuses on the following key areas:

· Putting employers at the heart of post-16 skills

· Providing the advanced technical and higher technical skills the nation needs

· A flexible, lifetime skills guarantee

· Responsive providers supported by effective accountability, governance, and intervention

· Supporting outstanding teaching

Many of the recommendations in the White Paper had already been announced in the Plan for Jobs and Spending Review. The action plan will be updated to incorporate the ‘new’ recommendations as they are finalised. 

T Levels

T Levels are new courses taken at further education establishments. They follow GCSEs and are equivalent to three A levels. These two-year courses were launched in September 2020. They have been developed in collaboration with employers and businesses so that the content meets the needs of industry and prepares students for work, further training or study.

T Levels offer students a mixture of classroom learning and ‘on-the-job’ experience during an industry placement of at least 315 hours (approximately 45 days). The first three T Levels are available in some areas of the country, although currently not in the city. A further seven T Levels will be available in September 2021, although not within the city. Additional T Levels will be introduced by 2023.

Post 16 – Level 3 qualification review

Consultation is ongoing regarding Level 3 qualifications. It is seeking views on proposals for the groups of qualifications that would continue to be funded alongside A levels and T Levels.

The review’s aim is to provide clearer qualifications choices for young people and adults. This will ensure that every qualification approved for public funding has a distinct purpose, is high quality and supports progression to positive outcomes for students.

Post 18 – Higher education reforms

From September 2022 there will be high quality Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) that meet employer needs. They will be approved and recognised nationally and will be clearly signalled to learners and employers.

This will be implemented through a new national scheme to approve level 4-5 qualifications that signal clear technical competence and skills. The scheme will provide the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that employers need.

The first approved HTQs will be rolled out through the Digital route starting in 2022. The approvals window for the Construction and Health and science routes will commence in summer 2021.

3. Externally funded projects

The city benefits from many projects financed by the European Social Fund. An example of such as project is the Making a Difference programme. This is a three-year European Social Fund programme covering the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) region. It provides tailored support to unemployed and economically inactive local people through regular intervals for up to four months. This helps them progress to job search readiness or move into paid employment.