How place-based skills development is the key to healthier, more economically active communities

Local collaboration is revolutionising skills policy in sport and physical activity. Spencer explores how targeted, place-based approaches are addressing workforce needs, improving community health, and boosting economic activity through innovative partnerships and data-driven strategies.

The New Government’s Skills Policy Agenda

Much has been said and written about the new Government’s early announcements which are setting the agenda for skills policy to be focused on local collaboration.

Of course, there are large aspects of this which are nothing new. When the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 was introduced to ‘put employers at the heart of the skills system’, many of us welcomed it knowing that it formalised an approach that we’d been championing for a long time.

The Importance of Local Collaboration in Skills Development

Bringing together employers, education and training providers and other stakeholders to determine and address local skills development priorities is something that professional bodies like ours, in many sectors, have been at the forefront of to ensure that current and future workforce needs are addressed.

Sport and Physical Activity: Addressing National Challenges

And in the sport and physical activity sector, we’re acutely aware of the importance of ensuring that we have a workforce equipped with the right skills – we know that it’s imperative to addressing two of the nation’s biggest challenges; reducing demand on the NHS and economic inactivity.

Ensuring that there is a local workforce which is able to engage communities in active well-being results in a reduction in many chronic health conditions. It helps those experiencing physical and mental health conditions recover better, often regaining the ability to become more economically active.

Local Skills Accountability Boards (LSABs): A Collaborative Approach

That is why, through place-based collaboration, with over thirty Local Skills Accountability Boards (LSABs) across England, Wales and Scotland, our sector is not just bringing together employer and education providers but local authorities, public health representatives and commissioners, employment support agencies, community groups and others, to ensure that skills development can truly impact local priorities.

Each LSAB is using data focused on community, economic and health priorities to create a local plan for sport and physical activity skills development.

Case Study: Nottingham and Nottinghamshire LSAB

The most recently released plan for Nottingham and Nottinghamshire is a great example of how focusing on the specific priorities of a city and county, and ensuring that you have the right people around the table, results in real impact on skills development.

Bringing together education partners including Vision West Nottinghamshire College and Nottingham Trent University, with local employers such as Everyone Active and Serco Leisure, plus Active Notts, the East Midlands Chamber of Commerce, NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board and a range of other stakeholders including Nottingham Forest Community Trust and YMCA Newark and Sherwood, the LSAB has delivered an action plan which is focused on ensuring skills development addresses local needs.

Data-Driven Decision-Making in Skills Development

Data from Active Notts, highlights that the population in Nottingham is growing, ageing and becoming more diverse. 26% of the population are inactive, with older, ethnically diverse and the least affluent households most likely to be inactive.

This impacts the health of the local population. Data from Public Health England shows that the health and life expectancy of people in Nottingham is worse than the England average. It also shows that rates of mortality from a number of chronic health conditions, which can be reduced through regular physical activity, are worse than the England average.

ONS data shows that in Nottingham almost 30% of the population are economically inactive. This compares to 21% as an average across England, with economic inactivity often a result of physical and mental health conditions.

So the LSAB have been driven to develop a plan which, by ensuring that the local sport and physical activity workforce has the right skills and capacity, will lead to more people increasing their physical activity. This will in turn improve the health of the population and therefore reduce economic inactivity.

Practical Implementation: Education and Training Providers’ Response

So what does this mean in practice?

Employers are focusing provision to engage those who are inactive within communities. For this, they need employees with the skills that can deliver specialist provision such as exercise for health referrals, including patients with cardiovascular illness, mental health conditions or diabetes. They need employees that understand how to engage diverse communities too.

Education and training providers are creating curricula to develop these skills, incorporating the sector’s professional standards including those for working with people with long-term health conditions, working with culturally and ethnically diverse communities and working inclusively, in their curriculum design.

Vision West Nottinghamshire College have used the professional standards and skills gap analysis from local employers to create four level 2 and level 3 professional qualifications which are endorsed by CIMSPA as the sector’s professional body. These programmes are already leading to local employers being able to fill their skills gaps and engage inactive communities.

Long-Term Impacts and Workforce Growth

And the outcomes of the work that the LSAB in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire is doing have long-term impacts.

To reach more of the population the workforce needs to grow. In Nottingham and Nottinghamshire there are almost 5,000 people directly employed in the sector (excludes those not employed in non-sport and physical activity industry businesses). Annually, this has been growing at a rate of over 5% in recent years with almost 300 employers competing to fill local roles in the last year.

The LSAB is therefore placing a big focus on attracting people to work in the sector by highlighting the breadth of opportunities available locally to both young people embarking on a career, and those considering a career change. Crucially there is a focus on recruiting from across communities with lived experience of benefiting from physical activity.

The Broader Picture: Skills Development Across the UK

The approach that has been adopted in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire is in no way unique. We’re seeing the same collaboration in the 30+ other areas around the UK that are creating their sport and physical activity skills plans.

What is unique to each locality is the outcomes of the forensic focus on those local priorities. No two areas have exactly the same challenges but by bringing together all stakeholders that have a part in not only education and employment, but also in health and wellbeing, wider economic sustainability and social cohesion, the place-based approach to skills development can fundamentally lead to a healthier more economically active community.

By Spencer Moore, Chief Strategy Officer, The Chartered Institute for the Management of Sport and Physical Activity (CIMSPA)

Spencer Moore is responsible for the sport and physical activity sector’s workforce development strategy, professional standards and educational development. Spencer has previously been Head of Curriculum within FE/HE and has led education and training development within leading sports sector bodies. Spencer is also a member of a college corporation board.