Agenda item

Jasbir Jhas, Senior Advisor, introduced a paper updating the Board on the LGA’s current activity on employment and skills. This item included a draft of the LGA/Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Statement of Intent (Annex A), and a draft LGA proposal for a devolved employment support programme for adults with multiple needs (Annex B). An updated printed copy of Annex B was circulated to members and they were encouraged to feed back their thoughts before the 30 October 2015, so that the proposal could be submitted to the Government at the beginning of November, in time to influence spending review decisions.

Dave Simmonds, Chief Executive of Inclusion, who was commissioned by the LGA to produce the proposal was invited to speak to Annex B. He said that he anticipated the DWP’s employment budgets being reduced in the upcoming Spending Review. He argued the case for focussing on adults with multiple-needs, who have a 19 percent job success rate as compared with 33 percent for other groups. The draft proposal supported the overall message that local government can do a better job of helping one million of the most disadvantaged jobseekers into work than national provision had thus far achieved. It also suggests that the funding envelope for the devolved programme would be estimated at £2.75bn over five years. This should come from DWP’s Work Programme to be combined with devolved skills and health funding.

Members discussed:

·         The importance of promoting integrated funds, such as the Troubled Families programme.

·         The issue of whether it is better to push for across-the-board devolved employment and skills programmes or to push for small devolved pilot programmes that can then act as a catalyst for further devolution.

·         The idea that the present skills shortage is a symptom of deeper problems with the wider economic system, and the need to widen the conversation to address these.

·         The importance of taking a long-term approach that is holistic rather than too narrow a focus on short-term piecemeal results.

·         The importance of framing the proposed employment programme as a mechanism for local models, rather than as the model that all local authorities should follow.

·         The possible value of the LGA taking a lead on negotiating devolution of Department for Education (DfE) funding, rather than leaving it for individual authorities to try to strike a pilot deal.

Action

Officers will develop the suggestions for further work in paragraphs 25 – 28 in a way that is sensitive to the concerns outlined by members.