Agenda and minutes

N Brewster the interim Chair, welcomed everyone to the meeting.

Apologies were noted as above.

Cllr B Mordue declared an interest in the item on LGF Investment Approval for Doncaster University Technical College as he was a member of Doncaster MBC.

None.

None.

RESOLVED – That the minutes of the meeting held on 6^th January 2020 be agreed as a true record.

The Board noted that, as requested, Skills and Employment Future Priorities was the substantive item on today’s agenda.

The role of Cllr Furness on the Board had also been clarified.

The Board considered a discussion paper on the high-level priorities that the Board may wish to pursue in support of the economic strategy.

At a previous meeting Members had received an overview of the current evidence base for skills and employment which formed part of the Strategic Economic Plan base.

The Board had agreed to consider four broad areas for further analysis and discussion.  These were:

1.         World Class Technical Education

2.         Young People

3.         Support into Work

4.         In-work Support

The paper presented provided an in-depth discussion paper on a World Class Technical Education and what it could mean for SCR residents and businesses.

Members were reminded of the SEP policy objectives which were growth, inclusion and sustainability.

SCR had committed to pursue growth which spread prosperity and contributed to achieving the net zero carbon target.

The Board had a lengthy discussion on what their priorities should be, the best ways of achieving them and how to overcome barriers to achievement.  The discussion included:

·         How to improve SCR’s occupational profile which has weighted more towards lower skilled occupations

·         How to achieve supply and demand within a functioning skills system that worked with businesses

·         The need to align the work of the Board with the work of the Business Growth Board

·         Investments should only be made to companies who provided good employment prospects e.g. paid the real living wage, provided apprenticeships and flexible working

·         Ways to support early years intervention

·         Ways to combine education with employment

·         Access to affordable learner loans

·         Access to good quality adult education

·         Work needed around in-work health and wellbeing

·         Investigate why SCR are good at starting businesses but not growing them.

Officers were asked to provide for the next meeting further information around:

·         Skills support programmes

·         Health and wellbeing interventions

·         Business Growth Board decision-making process to ensure investment only goes to companies demonstrating good employer behaviours

·         Providing a high quality all-age careers service

·         Systems and models for learner loans

Members of the Board felt that discussions had been positive and that their priorities were beginning to take shape.

Cllr Mordue had declared an interest in this item and took no part in the discussions.

A report was considered which requested approval for Doncaster UTC’s scheme with an LGF grant value of £0.150m.

Doncaster UTC had requested the grant to support a £0.750m scheme to purchase and install specialist equipment focused on robotics, physics and computing and virtual reality at a new site which would open in September 2020.

The full investment would allow the UTC to enhance their core curriculum based around STEM and allow the college to place further emphasis on digital technologies.

Over a period of 10 years the project was estimated to support 589 learners with an estimated 191 of the net additional learners subsequently moving into employment.  This indicated a potential cost equivalent of £787 per job to the SCR and was estimated to generate benefits of £6,737,779 of GVA.  The project therefore offered good value for money for the SCR.

Appendix A provided a summary of the scheme appraisal and the suggested conditions of the award.

RESOLVED – That the Board:

(i)       Approve the progression of the Doncaster UTC project to full approval and award up to $£0.15m grant to Doncaster UTC subject to the conditions set out in the Appraisal Panel Summary Table attached at Appendix A to the report.

(ii)        Delegate authority to the Head of Paid Service, in conjunction with the S73 and the Monitoring Officer, to enter into the contractual arrangements required as a result of the above approval.

S Sykes presented a report and performance dashboards to provide the Board with an update on performance information on all skills and employment programmes delivered on behalf of the LEP and the MCA.  It was noted that there were no issues with projects to report.

It was reported that it had been confirmed that the full amount of Skills Bank funding had been awarded for 2020/21.

With regard to the Local Growth Fund, the Board were informed that when contracting for projects, the standard LGF template was used which didn’t include information of quality.  S Sykes queried whether the Board thought this information would be useful.

Then Board felt that this should be included where relevant.

RESOLVED:

(i)            That the report be noted.

That when contracting for projects, quality should be included in the template where relevant.

None.