South West Local Economic Assessments:

developing consistency

Lorna Gibbons, South West Observatory

Consistency

What areas in the LEA lend themselves to a consistent approach?

What are we trying to achieve?

What questions are we trying to answer?

How can we have a consistent approach without losing local flexibility?

Options for consistency

The Essex questions

Approximately 100 questions

Have been shared in the South East with all the Local Authorities

Each LA will answer some / most of the questions within their LEA

Example of Essex Questions

Essex businesses are mostly SMEs. Has this made Essex more or less resilient to the recession?

What are the opportunities or constraints affecting key sectors?

How many patents per/head of economically active population are registered by Essex businesses as compared to E of E, SE and England? Has this changed over the past nine years?

Are certain sections of society removed from the labour market – if so, why?

What are the skills gaps in the Essex resident population?

Are students leaving school/FE/HE with the right skills? Which urban populations and locations are most in

need of intervention?How many affordable homes are required to meet

need and where should they be located?What additional land/floorspace will be brought forward

through LDFs? Will this be adequate to meet need?

How can we address core questions consistently?

Common data sourcesCore indicatorsJointly owned research

Common approaches to analyses and assessmentOther?

Worklessness

Skills and Learning Intelligence Module are coordinating Worklessness work to share the skills strategy with the Local Authorities as some relevant

data will be prepared here etc Job Center Plus a member of the Economic Assessment Steering

Group The SLIM website contains access to a wide range of relevant data

that should be of help to local authorities in developing their assessments.

SLIM is in the process of producing the Regional Employment and Skills Analysis 2010. This is due to be published in January 2010 and will contain an overview of worklessness in the region.

Have completed the employment evidence base section of the regional employment and skills analysis.  That will be made available soon.

NESS

The National Employer Skills Survey (NESS) is undertaken every year. The survey takes the form of a structured interview. The broad categories it covers are:

Establishment details Recruitment and Hard to fill vacancies Skills gaps UPSKILLING Workforce Training and Development Business approach

Plan to work with LSC to produce consistent data for all LA’s.

The table below gives an example of some of the outputs that can be generated.

Training

Any training over the last 12 months

Any off-the-job training in the last 12 months

Training plan

Budget for training

Skills Gaps

Any staff not fully

proficient

Number of staff

not fully proficient as a % of employm

ent

Vacancies and skill-shortage vacancies

Any vacancies

Any hard-to-fill vacancies

Any SSVs

% of all

vacancies

which are

SSVs

Number of SSVs per

1,000 employees

BUT It will not be possible to release any analysis of the NESS until March 10

Existing sources:

Links to your Joint Strategic Needs Assessment. Crime Maps: http://maps.police.uk/ The Home Office

initiative gives the public immediate access to figures on all crimes and specifically burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime and anti social behaviour.

ONS Place Profiles – Steve Bond – more information in the next presentation

Research? Something on Functional Economic Areas / mapping Economic Linkages?

Many different ways consistency can be achieved

Link between CAA and LEAs

Audit Commission don’t performance manage the process but look at how the public sector delivers the outcomes they have identified as their priorities.

CAA asks three questions. LEA has a role in the first and third questions.

Link between CAA and LEAs

1. What is this priority based on? Where is the evidence for this understanding? Why have you have set this as a priority? How have the districts been involved in these priorities?

LEA has a role in evidencing the policy

2. What are you doing? How successful have you been? What do the indicators suggest?

3. This is the ‘so what’ question. How likely is it that you will succeed in what you have set out to do? Has this got legs? Is this sustainable into the future? What actions have been taken to recover (if necessary)? What has changed? Was the evidence base incorrect? How is this feeding back into the LEA?

CAA

It is recognised that the LEA process is a learning curve.

CAA is a fluid process.CAA is a continuous dialogueEven if things are not going in the right direction there

will be time to put things right.Audit commission have offered to do a presentation on

the links between CAA and LEA’s if this would be useful?

Looking at the three main areas outlined in the draft guidance, what are the high level questions we should try to answer in the LEA?

What do we need to find out that isn’t likely to be readily available?

Can we jointly develop a brief for work to define functional economic areas?

How can the Observatory and the RIEP help going forward?