Developing Skills

A key economic challenge facing Dorset is the shortage of highly skilled workers - particularly in specific sectors including aerospace, electronics and aircraft engineering.

Significant investment and support for skills development is required to meet the BIG Programme’s target of creating up to 10,000 new highly skilled jobs.

The Skills Escalator, part of the Bournemouth International Growth (BIG) Programme, has been established to help cater for the current and future skills needs of a range of key employment sectors based at Bournemouth Airport and the surrounding area.

The project is being led jointly by Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership, local councils, Bournemouth and Poole College and a number of local businesses including AIM Altitude, Cobham, MAG and Ultra Electronics.

Detailed research has been undertaken to understand what skills sets employers are struggling to find. In response, a number of initiatives are now underway to meet these skills gaps. Two groups led by local businesses have been tasked with taking these projects forward:

• The Escalator Implementation Group is working to develop a skills and training facility at Bournemouth Airport to meet the increasing demand of the aircraft engineering, electronics and aerospace sectors.
• The Technical Skills Development Group is working to improve links between business and schools, organise events on topics such as apprenticeships, encourage the improvement of STEM provision, and set up joint procurement of bespoke CPD training.

Events: