24 DEBATE
Michele Lawty-Jones, director, Lancashire Skills and Employment Hub
In manufacturing in Lancashire, we’ve got about 88,000 people in the workforce. That is 14 per cent of our economically active people.
It’s the county’s third biggest employment sector. When we go back five or six years ago when we were looking at employment forecasts it was, ‘automation is going to reduce the size of the sector’. That hasn’t happened.
It has actually grown and what we’re seeing is a shift in skill sets. So, it is about educating people about the different types of skills that are required and moving away from that perception of dirty industries.
Since January we’ve had 6,000 jobs posted in Lancashire in manufacturing. We are filling those jobs better than the average. Areas like health and social care are facing more significant challenges in terms of attracting people.
We are doing a lot of work around the technical education pathways, apprenticeships, the new T-levels and the like, trying to balance academic routes with technical ones.
We are seeing a real boost in the need for digital skills applied to technology and within manufacturing.
There’s a shifting requirement for skills around data analysis and software programming analysis and so on. There are challenges ahead but there is huge opportunity at the same time.
Neil Burrows, assistant principal – apprenticeships, employer engagement and adult skills, Burnley College
You can go into schools and talk to the young people in them. Those young people then need to go back and talk to parents, so engaging with parents is important as well.
Following the GCSE results we will have lots of young people coming in, looking at engineering. We can now show them more new skills: digital, automation, robotics, we’ve invested heavily. Low-carbon technologies, hydrogen technology, battery technology.
We can talk to those young people, speak to the mums and dads and show them the opportunities available.
There’s a myriad of opportunities that all add up to what we call engineering. We have a digital division and I’ve been working to bring divisions together in the college so our digital students can get into the engineering sector and the health sector and every sector. It’s been a challenge, but we have the support of businesses as well.
Our digital students are involved in projects with businesses and we’re doing this with the North West Aerospace Alliance. Young people are getting that experience, working with businesses.
We have got to get the right skills and the curriculum intent has got to be absolutely aligned to industry. We can only do that with the support of businesses.
Andy Schofield, chair, North West Aerospace Alliance
There is a need to enhance the skills of ‘conventional’ manufacturing. We are all going to be fabricating parts, machining parts, making composite parts, so we need to do those things better.
As we move into more transformational engineering and manufacturing, we get into ‘disruptive technologies’. We need to understand these technologies and how we design for them, manufacture for them and maintain them.
There’s some great investment in the North West and particularly in Lancashire, with AMRC North West, UCLan, Lancaster University and Edge Hill, some fantastic opportunities to develop new technologies. If we can align the requirements SMEs have with those developments and direction and network, we’ll be in a better place.
I started at BAE Systems as an apprentice over 40 years ago and a lot of people said to me, ‘Why did you never move?’ Look at the opportunities I had working in different areas and different projects.
There is a full-scale replica of the Tempest aircraft at Warton. Before I left, I talked to apprentices and said, ‘If you get the opportunity to work on this, it’s a 30 to 40-year career to do all sorts of things,’ and it is.
Melissa Conlon, commercial director AMRC North West
The biggest challenge we’ve got is that engineering companies are now driving digitalisation in terms of systems and processes.
It has been accelerated by the pandemic and that is why we’ve got this situation, because nuclear is booming, aerospace is booming, all these industries are booming, and we are not there yet in terms of the blended skill set.
Neil has spoken about getting Burnley College’s digital department speaking to the engineering department and that is exactly what is needed.
We need to work with schools and colleges and businesses, bring people into schools and get young people into workplaces and we need to work so teachers understand the opportunities in the sector.
For the adult population, the opportunity to pivot and change career is fabulous, most people don’t want to stay in the same job for years anymore. There are things like skills boot camps that we’ve been trailblazing in Lancashire.
We’ve got loads of opportunities to work together to bring more people through and fabulous brands like BAE Systems. We’ve got NCF on the agenda to attract people into Lancashire.
It is also about using our universities, working together to look at the multidisciplinary skill sets that we need and specialisms within those, within our local institutions.
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