The definition of collaboration – the Local Skills Plan for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland

Beaumont Park Football Club played host to the inaugural Local Skills Plan launch, where a range of key local stakeholders came together to celebrate the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland local skills plan for sport and physical activity.

Richard Kerr, the CIMSPA Skills Hub Manager for the region kicked the day off by outlining the magnitude of the collaboration that had taken place between local stakeholders such as employers, education providers, employability-focused organisations and local authorities.

Richard went on to emphasise how working together with the local community will ensure we effectively and efficiently match supply and demand in the sports and physical activity sector workforce, whilst also noting the significant impact this would have on wider agendas, most prominently relating to improving health outcomes and positively impacting wellbeing.

“We’ve done a lot of collaboration with employers, really capturing what they’re telling us about their needs. We’ve spent time with education providers to enable better understanding of their offerings. Then we work to connect these partners to understand where we can align.

“On the back of these conversations we have created the three recommendations that form the foundations of the skills plan. Within these recommendations you will see a set of actions and sub actions that allow us to adapt and take into account new considerations as we move through the three-year cycle”

View the Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland 2024 to 2027 Local Skills Plan

Tara Dillon, CIMSPA CEO, then kicked off by congratulating everyone for their roles in the success of the project, stressing the importance it holds as a trailblazer that is paving the way for other regions to drive our sector forward through utilising the extraordinary platform we have created.

“When we work in an organised, placed based set up and all partners come together and share insights, knowledge and plans, we can create something really special.

“We now have a model we can pick up and emulate in all of our 37 regions, and that’s simply incredible.”

Tara went on to talk more about the positive impact this project will have and how local skills action plans offer invaluable quantitative evidence to enable her to lobby government to understand the impact of our sector and therefore offer more tangible investment.

“Local authorities, boroughs and cities all identify health, community and social cohesion as ‘big ticket’ items. Those items are where local community based projects in the sport and physical activity sector can offer significant impact.

“We’re aligning employer led needs with education and community, and then creating a highly skilled workforce for that locality. If we measure the impact of the effectiveness of that in all 37 regions, the sector then becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

“That’s because we can say for example, we’ve created a more inclusive workforce in Beaumont Leys, we’ve had a huge impact on the community in Loughborough, we’ve positively impacted the high levels of diabetes in Melton.

“These kinds of results and this type of data will make any government or local authority sit up and listen.”

Next up to address those in attendance was John Byrne, Active Partnership Director at Active Together. John reiterated the power of collaboration and what we are capable of achieving together.

“The gift we’ve got in this room is we can and do change lives.

“The best way we can achieve this is through our workforce and the best way of supporting our workforce is making sure they are getting the right offering. That’s what this skills plan is all about.”

John went on emphasise, whilst we had phenomenal opportunities at our fingertips, it was reliant upon the support of all parties.

“We’ve got a range of partners that ‘get it’ and a range of people that care about it. We need to ensure this action plan makes a difference for the people in our locality.

“With your support, by working together, by challenging each other, by supporting each other and by collaborating, we have a massive opportunity. We’ll make this work together.”

Laura Shepherd, Director of Strategic Partnerships and External Relationships at Loughborough College offered some valuable insights as to the work they had been doing with partners and how this has had a positive impact in influencing curriculum and career pathways.

“We’ve consulted with 119 employers; we’ve gathered invaluable data that has really helped inform our actions both locally and nationally across all of sport and physical activity.

“We’ve been really connecting our employers needs with how we design our curriculum. In some instances, we’ve thrown elements of that curriculum out of the window and started again from scratch.

“There has been a comprehensive redesign of our education pathways, we’ve been embedding industry qualifications into these, so for example you’ve got coaching and gym instructing in there. As well as being academically sound, this ensures students actually understand the industry they’re going in to.”

Laura continued to talk through some other adaptations Loughborough College had made to the make-up of courses, based upon findings from conversations with local stakeholders.

“We’ve also included in our courses a range of non-qualification learning opportunities such as safeguarding, mental health and wellbeing, manual handling and first aid. The idea is we deliver a workforce that are ready to go directly into employment.”

“Our curriculum now emphasises that real life experience and through this project we’ve delivered over 1,000 hours of volunteering support across a range of partners.

“For us, that’s really enhancing our learners understanding of their career pathways and gives them the opportunity to see first-hand the leadership roles they potentially aspire to be in in the future.”

Laura concluded with some final takeaways that further served to emphasise the benefits of collaboration as part of the Local Skills Accountability Board (LSAB) for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

“The employability outcomes of our students have hugely increased as a result of this. We’ve been able to really leverage the information from the skills plan and employer feedback to shape qualifications that are highly relevant.

“We are actively working with a number of organisations, taking this information and helping them to rewrite their qualifications to align with what the sector needs.”

As a hugely successful day drew to a close there was a definite feeling of togetherness and accomplishment, but also one of eagerness to deliver on the Local Skills Plan we had all worked so tirelessly to create.

A groundbreaking opportunity to positively influence the local community was at our fingertips, and whilst there was a lot of work to do, there was a tangible excitement at the prospect of building on the momentous foundations that had been built together.

Please find our first sport and physical activity local skills plan for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland below.

View Skills Plan

Take a look at our round up video that captures some of the highlights of the Local Skills Plan launch for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.