Ministers won’t solve Cambridgeshire’s skills crisis with such feeble budgets

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

Either Ministers need to crack up the funding, or provide Combined Authorities (that have devolved budgets on adult education) with substantial revenue-raising powers to pay for the investment in education, skills, and lifelong learning needed to being about a renaissance in adult education

This is from Item 4 of the Cambridge City Council Strategy and Resources Scrutiny Committee coming up on 10th Feb 2025 – which I’ll probably throw a PQ at. Hence asking all of you to have a look at the Cambridge Development Corporation updates tabled for the same meeting to get some public Qs tabled for that one too. Because quite rightly I’m only allowed one question per meeting. If you want other issues raised, I can’t do it for you! (Alternatively, email your city councillor via https://www.writetothem.com/ and ask them to table a question on your behalf)

£4.8 million won’t buy you that much as far as new buildings go

The allocation as capital funding means that it cannot go on things like employing teachers. (That’s ‘revenue’ funding)

Above – CPCA O&S – Item 9 AppA

This reinforces the point I made in this blogpost about the mayoral candidates needing to be far more ambitious with future policies (and say so in their campaigns) and demand much more from ministers than the highly restrictive commissioning structures that deliver the Government’s, and not the county’s priorities on skills, education, and learning for adults. Because otherwise all that they are doing is acting as dispassionate commissioners assessing the bids that come back against the criteria signed off by ministers. Where’s the local democracy in that? Note combined authorities have no in-house capacity – hence we’re back with Mariana Mazzucato’s criticisms of outsourcing and consultancy again. The only line of accountability is a contractual one – are the providers delivering to the contract?

The Further Education Cold Spots funding

Further down the slide pack they state what the funding can be spent on. It can cover renovation and refurbishment, but it cannot be spent on a brand new building. Understandable given how limited the funding is, but that automatically restricts the number of institutions that can actually bid for that funding. And putting together a bid in itself is not a cost-free exercise for the firms responding to the competitive tender.

Above – from the CPCA

Note the criteria below requires the institutions to already own their own assets – which is fair enough. But how far will the capital funding go?

…and what happens afterwards? (i.e. for how long do providers have to provide learning and skills programmes given that it is third parties that will benefit from the taxpayers’ injection of capital funding that will improve the assets of the former?)

The set of slides at Item 4 Appendix D provided by the CPCA hints at a series of future policy changes

  • Local Growth Plan (March 25) & LSIP 2 (Sept 25)
  • Youth Guarantee Trailblazer (18-21 – tackling NEET)
  • Work, Health & Skills Plan (Connect to Work)
  • Employer engagement and support – Good Work Charter
  • Skills Innovation (Innovation Grants)
  • Changes to planning and a greater focus on strategic work around S106 skills and employment plans
  • Delivering an infrastructure that enables participation i.e. Transport, Childcare etc. Travel to Learn & Earn

The final point is particularly interesting as I’ve been chasing the CPCA over the lack of co-ordination between their transport infrastructure policy work and where the locations of the places they are investing their capital budgets in. If they can ensure public transport networks around the institutions they are investing skills capital budgets in can also be done, then more people will be able to access the new facilities.

The problem again is that the sums they are talking about are tiny compared to the rhetoric of skills shortages, and the actual scale of the chronic shortages.

Developers with big planning applications

I wrote about Fenway here a few days ago. Given the location of the planning application, the developer is required by local planning policy to have such an employment and skills strategy. See Greater Cambridge Shared Planning – NECAAP Topic Paper: Skills, Training, & Local Employment Opportunities, p17 here

Above – from the GCSP Portal 24/04575/FUL Employment and Skills Strategy submitted 05 Dec 2024 – which is ***all the way at the foot of the table***

Scroll down the document to pp23-27 and you can see the table of suggested commitments. Anyone with an interest in skills and learning in Cambridge should have a look at that and let the city council know of your views – either to the GCSP directly, or via your local councillors.

Above – 24/04575/FUL Employment and Skills Strategy p24

I’d want the above commitments independently monitored to ensure that the developer is sticking to what they’ve committed to. For example that detailed employment and skills plan – which really should involve the Combined Authority.

Given that the NECAAP (covering the North Cambridge Station area, the Anglian Water Site, the Cambridge Business Park and the Science Park) covers some major planning applications, the CPCA really should have a member of staff ensuring that all of the plans are co-ordinated so that the funding can be pooled to pay for some long term capital improvements.

Or is that too much to ask for?

Then again, Cambridge& has invited the impossible, and I haven’t even mentioned concert halls!

Above – Cambridge&

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to: