CEO of CIMSPA, Tara Dillon said,
“Today we heard the Chancellor continuing to champion the pursuit of growth with her Budget statement highlighting investment in building, infrastructure and enterprise. But despite continued efforts by our sector there is a failure to recognise that without an active, healthy population there simply won’t be the workforce now and into the future to deliver that growth.
Physical activity, active wellbeing and sport is a key catalyst that fires the economy and growth, and so it continues to be frustrating that in a budget where the Chancellor talked of renewing the NHS and getting people back to work, there was no commitment to championing our sector and our talented, dedicated, professionally recognised workforce as being a key driver to getting and keeping people healthy and economically active.
What was pleasing to see is the focus on skills which has all too often been an afterthought of governments. The announcement of further devolution of funding for improving local skills provision to meet local needs and priorities aligns with the pioneering work that has been taking place across our sector through local skills accountability boards, helping to ensure that curriculum and learning provision directly addresses employers skills needs.
Equally, the move to make apprenticeship training fees completely free of charge for small and medium sized businesses where their apprentice is under the age of 25, is something that our sector will warmly welcome. With over 90% of businesses in our sector being SME, the cost of training can be a significant barrier to taking on a young person and giving them work and experience which will hugely benefit them throughout their lives. However, it is imperative that these small enterprises are also spared any additional bureaucratic burdens in accessing funding and training if we are all to reap the rewards of this policy change.
These measures on skills and apprenticeships along with further commitment to the Youth Guarantee and the promise of learning and work support for young people not in education, employment or training are positive and will hopefully start to move the dial in increasing opportunities for young people to develop positive futures. We know how attractive our sector is to new entrants to the labour market and that is why we are committed, along with partners across the sector, to supporting the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) by leading on the Sport and Physical Activity Employability Academy which is already yielding excellent results with high employability rates of jobseekers participating in the pilot. We hope that measures announced in the budget as well as funding and policies already being introduced will enable us to work collaboratively to grow the impact to more areas and jobseekers.”