Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding her Department provided to (a) combined authorities, (b) local authorities, (c) Local Enterprise Partnerships and (d) employer representative bodies to support the development of local skills improvement plans in the latest period for which data is available.

The development, review and implementation of Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) are led by designated employer representative bodies (ERBs) who work closely with employers and a range of local stakeholders, including the Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) / the Greater London Authority (GLA) and local authorities. The department is funding the designated ERBs up to £550,000 for each LSIP for the period between September 2022 and March 2025. The only exception is Greater London, where double the amount of funding, £1.1million, is available to reflect the overall size of the area.

More information about LSIP grant funding for employer representative bodies is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/654b7980e70413000ffc49fb/Local_skills_improvement_plans_-_stage_2.pdf.

In addition, in the 2022/23 financial year, the MCAs / GLA and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) received up to £55,000 to support the development of the LSIPs by providing analytical support to the designated ERBs. This was a transitional arrangement put in place while funding for the Skills Advisory Panels (SAPs) programme was being phased out.

Delivering the priorities set out in LSIPs will require collective action from a range of local partners, including local and regional government. The LSIP stage 2 guidance makes it clear that the designated ERBs should engage constructively with MCAs/the GLA, local authorities and LEPs so that the employer intelligence set out in LSIPs can dock into local strategies and bear influence on other skills-related funding streams in ways that are mutually reinforcing.