Member Article

Engage skills programmes or prepare for disaster

Skill shortages in the process industry need robust training schemes to stop businesses moving out of the region, according to the leader of a local employment programme.

George Ritchie, representing the Sembcorp Skills Development Programme at the North East of England Process Industry Cluster (NEPIC) forum, said companies needed to take urgent action.

“This is a £60bn industry that represents 12 per cent of all UK manufacturing and it has a very strong export market,” he said. “But there are significant skill shortages. Just to stand still we need 8,000 new vocational and graduate personnel by the year 2020.”

Problems facing the industry include an ageing workforce, where the average age is 55, in a region with a level of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) that is more than twice the national average at 13 per cent.

“If these problems are not addressed then businesses will move away from the UK and that will have a major impact on the economy,” said Mr Ritchie. “It is a disaster that we in the UK just cannot afford.”

Building on the success of Tees Valley apprenticeship and production technician programmes has allowed Sembcorp to develop its own skills development programme (ssdpnortheast.co.uk) and position itself as an advisor to other firms.

Small to medium sized companies are being encouraged to engage with the programme and Mr Ritchie said grants and other funding are available to develop both graduate and “non-traditional” industry and employer-led apprenticeships.

“We need places for apprentices and graduates,” said Mr Ritchie. “Employers find it difficult to fund but we are here to help. We are trying to fast track programmes and target new recruits because that is where the government wants us to deliver.”

Young people aged between 16 and 24 who are classified as NEETs will be targeted by a pre-apprenticeship programme designed to prepare them for industrial schemes.

“It will be picking up these young people and trying to give them a future,” said Mr Ritchie. “It will give them an opportunity to see if they could be apprentices and go on to the apprentice programme.”

Business and skills minister Vince Cable was at the programme’s launch in May and the first graduate intake will begin in September with apprentices starting in January 2014.

“It is a fast track programme but it needs to be if we are going to hit targets in recruitment by 2020,” said Mr Ritchie. “We have money from Government but we need to spend it wisely.”

Chief Executive of NEPIC, Stan Higgins, said the myth surrounding jobs in local process industries was one that needed to be challenged directly, adding: “Because a lot of data is reported through head offices, a lot of jobs and output are not reported here. Since 2005 we have lost a few hundred jobs, but in 2013 we will get back to 10,000 jobs on Teeside.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Robin Fearon .