News

Skills and Employment Summit: Building an Integrated System for Growth

On 12 November Local London hosted a Skills and Employment Summit to drive forward an integrated approach to skills and workforce development across our sub-region.

Despite many successes to celebrate, the sub-region’s rapid population growth combined with persistent inequalities underscore the crucial need to tackle barriers constraining people and businesses in boroughs in north east and south east London.

To address this, Local London has placed boosting skills and employment at the heart of its new Vision.

Forogh Rahmani Director of Local London talking to Mark Hilton Director at Business LDN on stage.

Supported by the Mayor of London and BusinessLDN, the half-day event at City Hall brought together employers, education providers, local authorities, policy partners, and community organisations to explore practical solutions for recruitment, workforce development, and inclusive growth.

With distinguished speakers from government, education, training and business, the summit celebrated local successes and introduced new initiatives that will help thousands more people find good work in the sub-region.

Recently launched Connect to Work and Trailblazers programmes, funded by government, present opportunities for businesses and health sector colleagues to play an active role in helping local people find and stay in work.

While the new Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) will further align education and training with the needs of local businesses, helping people in this part of London to gain the skills they need to benefit from roles on their doorstep.

Cllr Ray Morgon, Chair of the Local London Skills and Employment Board and Leader of LB of Havering said “With a population set to exceed 3 million by 2050, there is an urgent need to create an integrated system that serves local people and businesses. We will be launching our Vision for inclusive and sustainable growth later this month and boosting employment and skills is right at the heart of this. To be effective, we need collaboration. Today’s Summit brought together people who can make that change, and we urge businesses, education and training providers, health partners to work with us to develop the cohesive system we need.”

The Local London Vision sets out our plan for the driving sustainable and inclusive employment backdrop of strategies that are catalysing change at a national and London level, including the London Growth Plan and the Inclusive Talent Strategy, and complementing national, London and borough growth and investment plans.

Our thanks to all our brilliant speakers and panellists:

Nicki Hay MBE - Director of Apprenticeship Strategy and Policy | BPP Education Group, Skills England Board Member, AELP Chair
Michael Morley - Group Director, DWP London
Erica Moses-Neacy - Strategic Workforce Planning Specialist, Future Skills Team, TfL
Asfa Sohail - Deputy CEO and Group Principal, LSEC and Co-Chair of the Local London Skills Providers Network
Deputy Mayor Howard Dawber OBE, Business and Growth
Janet Gardner OBE – Principal and CEO, Waltham Forest College
Matt Robinson – CEO, GetZero
Mark Hilton - Policy Delivery Director, BusinessLDN
Christopher Rocks - Supervisory Economist, GLA Economics
Forogh Rahmani – Director, Local London