The West of England Local Enterprise Partnership’s skills team is holding its first ‘show and tell’ event next Tuesday at UWE.
Aimed at educators and skills providers, local employers, careers advisers and other LEPs from across the country, the Skills: An Insight conference will showcase some of their innovative activities and present the LEP Pilot scheme underway with BIS. 
The keynote speeches will come from Mark Stewart, Airbus general manager and HR director and chair of the Aerospace Growth Partnership Skills, and LEP chief executive Paul Wilson.
LEP director for skillsJane Middleton said: “We are very excited to be able to focus on the key growth sectors for the West of England, to create a pipeline for identifying the skills requirements in these sectors and to work with our educators to meet these needs.
"Our business engagement activity is growing and we want to share some of these ideas and to hear from stakeholders and other LEPs about programmes and initiatives happening elsewhere. We are working to address skill shortages and ensure we create the workforce for the future.
“This event will give delegates an understanding of the range of work carried out by the LEP Skills team and give them the opportunity to engage in the work going forward, and create avenues for them to contribute to and influence educators.”
There will be a series of workshops during the day for delegates which will tackle issues such as:
* what can LEPs do to match skills and training provision with local industry strengths?
* what are the challenges to identifying and meeting future local skills needs?
* how can LEPs develop long-term partnerships with employers and training providers?
The LEP Skills team will also be launching Skills Junction at the conference – a website developed by the team to help businesses and individuals find local training providers. Funded by UKCES, Skills Junction aims to simplify the search for training providers and resources.
The event takes place at UWE Exhibition and Conference Centre from 10am-3pm next Tuesday February 4. To book a place, email marina.traversari@woeskills.co.uk.
