Annual Accountability Statement for South Tyneside Works

South Tyneside Council launched its new 20-year vision and 3-year strategy during November 2022.

The new Vision is evidence led and focuses our ambition, energy, and resources on tackling the biggest and most fundamental issues facing residents and is a result of intensive engagement with thousands of residents, businesses, partners, Council teams and elected members.

The Vision and Strategy are informed by our latest data and feedback, to ensure our plans are driven by evidence – gathered through our residents and business surveys, community insights group, workshops and as part of the Our South Tyneside Conversation.

Our Vision

South Tyneside Council 20-year Vision is:

• Our South Tyneside - A place where people live healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives.

Our Ambitions

We have five 'Ambitions' that we want to achieve over the next 20 years to help deliver our Vision.

These five Ambitions will guide everything we do.

We want all people in South Tyneside to be:

• Financially secure - Residents will be financially secure. They will have what they need for a good standard of living.
• Healthy and well - Residents will enjoy good mental wellbeing and physical health throughout their lives. They will have the best start in life and be able to live and age well.
• Connected to jobs - Residents will have access to good quality jobs, skills, and learning. They will have the skills and confidence to apply for a wide range of quality local jobs. These jobs will be in key and growing areas of employment and will benefit all of our borough.
• Part of strong communities - Residents will live in clean, green, and connected communities where they feel safe.

And we are committed to:

• Targeting support to make things fairer - We will target support at the residents and parts of our borough that need it the most, reducing inequalities and making things fairer.

Our service vision is that South Tyneside and the wider travel to work area will be host to a learning offer that is purposeful and in the interest of the learner and that is capable of engaging individuals, no matter their individual starting point to provide a route to a sustainable employment outcome.

Strategic Aims and Objectives

The Skills Service contributes to the vision and 3-year strategy by providing a personalised combination of appropriate education and training activity.

Our goal is to make a tangible contribution to the objectives set out in the Economic Inclusion and Skills plan to:

• Get more of our residents into sustainable, good employment and provide a joined-up support package that boosts employability skills
• Boost aspiration amongst our residents and support young people to make informed choices, creating real career pathways linked to labour market demand
• Ensure training provision matches labour market requirements and meets employer and investor needs, addressing skills gaps and shortages
• Meet the needs of future generations by reskilling and upskilling our workforce to meet the Climate Change Emergency and maximise opportunities from the global move towards digital and automation
• Generate inclusive and sustainable economic growth that reduces health inequality, deprivation and poverty in partnership with wider teams across the Council

South Tyneside Council’s Skills Service delivers post-16 education training services to residents across the whole of the borough of South Tyneside and the wider non-devolved and devolved North of Tyne Combined Authority travel to learn area.

South Tyneside covers an area of 24.88 square miles and has a population of 147,800 residents:

• 48.5% male and 51.5% female
• 16.8% of the population is under 15
• 62.3% are aged 15-64 and
• 20.9% are 65 and over.

The 2019 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) ranked South Tyneside as the 23rd most deprived authority out of England’s 151 upper tier authorities. Almost 45% of South Tyneside’s population live in the most deprived 20% of England, while around 1% live in the least deprived 10%.

A higher proportion of the working age population have no qualifications (8.3%), than regionally (8.2) and Great Britain (6.6%).

South Tyneside’s gap in the employment rate between people with a physical or mental long-term health condition and the overall employment rate is 14.8 – larger than regionally (13.9) and nationally (10.7).

Nearly one quarter (24.6%) of South Tyneside’s working age population was economically inactive between July 2021 and June 2022, of which long term sickness was the leading cause (41.4%).

A higher proportion of the working age population have no qualifications (8.3%), than regionally (8.2) and GB (6.6%).

South Tyneside is home to around 4,100 businesses employing 41,400 people in 2020. This has fallen by nearly 4,000 employees in the last five years (-9%). The main sector strengths are manufacturing, construction and hospitality. The borough is also dependent on the public sector as a source of jobs with 26% of jobs in South Tyneside in the public sector compared with 22% in the LEP area and 17% in England minus London.

Our delivery model continues to be predominantly externally commissioned with around 96% of all delivery provided by subcontractors. Commissioned delivery continues to be important because:

• It provides key elements of our place-based curriculum such as engineering, advanced manufacturing and health and social care which are not otherwise sufficiently available in the local area and which we do not have the capacity to offer ourselves
• It enables the Council to more effectively direct and influence the activities of a wider range of external organisations to support local residents
• It allows the service to be agile and respond more effectively to identified needs as they arise
• It drives up standards across a range of providers by creating an enabling environment for commissioned suppliers to collaborate and share best practice

Our commissioning cycle continues to play a pivotal role in ensuring the provision we offer sufficiently responds to local need.

Our commissioning arrangements are designed to support those who reside in the borough of South Tyneside for our ESFA funded activity and residents from the North of Tyne geography for our NTCA funded provision.

It is our expectation that subcontracted providers are able to demonstrate capacity and capability to identify, target and engage with those who live in these areas and are able to bring forward provision which meets the needs of local employers.

Skills South Tyneside Commissioning Process

1. Analysis - Growth, Employment and Sectors
2. Development – Guidance, Specification and Commissioning statement
3. Procurement – NEPO, SQ Process and ITT Process
4. Delivery – Subcontractors, Performance, Continuous Improvement, Quality
5. Review – Sanctions and Reconciliation

This process repeats in a continuous circle.

The Council works closely with a range of public, private and third sector partners to deliver against its duties and ambitions for the local community.

Partnership working is a strength in South Tyneside. We are a small borough with well-established, positive joint-working arrangements with our partners.

In recent years we have launched positive campaigns such as #LoveSouthTyneside and the South Tyneside Pledge to further strengthen the role of the voluntary, community and business sectors in delivering improvements for our communities.

The Council also plays a key role in several regional multi-agency partnerships. Our more formal partnership arrangements include the overarching South Tyneside Partnership Board, and sub-boards. These arrangements will be refreshed in line with the new Vision & Ambitions.

Partners have committed to working more closely to tackle cross-cutting issues together. This will include more shared resource, risk and effort, and joint decisions with better intelligence and data sharing.

Partners include:

• Local Government Association
• South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust
• Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities
• Inspire South Tyneside
• Northumbria Police
• North East Local Enterprise Partnership
• South Tyneside College
• Job Centre Plus
• Pledge South Tyneside
• Groundwork
• Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service
• Arts Council England
• NEXUS
• North East Combined Authority (NECA)
• North East England Chamber of Commerce
• Healthwatch South Tyneside

Our Skills offer is predominantly delivered through a network of externally commissioned training providers.

A broad range of provision exists to support progression towards the labour market and commissioned activity must demonstrate how it will complement and collaborate with other provision to generate effective and meaningful progression.

This places a responsibility on providers to work with the Skills Service and to directly:

• effectively engage with local people
• forge strong links with potential referrers
• understand what else is available to support progression
• recognise the role other activities can play in supporting learner transition and progression towards sustainable employment
• create links with provision that will improve the employment prospects for learners and, where relevant, directly with employers

We support the development and growth of provision where there is clear evidence of providers striving to meet these priorities.

Where there is insufficient evidence of this we will implement sanctions to reduce the size of provision or, in cases where issues become persistent or we identify poor performance or practice, we will take swift action, in line with our quality assurance processes, to withdraw provision.

Our Education to Employment delivery model maps out some of the core activities which exist to provide support to those furthest from the labour market, those who are in work and individuals who are in transition between these two points.

The model is intended to provide a starting point to aid understanding of where prospective activity might fit. Providers can use this to consider where their individual offer might fit with the wider post-16 landscape and to begin identifying opportunities for collaboration across key activities aimed at increasing engagement, raising skills levels, improving employment prospects and supporting progression.

Strand 1 – Removing barriers to employment

• DWP Work Coaches
• National Careers Service (NCS)
• DWP Work and Health Programme
• Community Learning
• Support Families Programme
• Rising Star
• Community Grants
• Job Centre Plus
• Hot Jobs
• Connexions

Strand 2: Developing employability skills

• UK Share Prosperity Fund
• Multiply
• National Careers Service (NCS)
• Study Programme
• Adult Education Budget
• Traineeships
• Apprenticeships
• Rising Star
• Mental Health Trailblazer
• Community Work Placements

Strand 3: Engaging employers

• South Tyneside Pledge
• JCP Work Experience / Work Trial
• JCP Community Work Placement
• Study Programme
• Adult Education Budget
• Traineeships
• Apprenticeships
• Generation North East
• Mental Health Trailblazer
• DWP Flexible Support Fund
• Rising Star
• The Exchange Programme

Strand 4: In work support and destination tracking

• DWP Work and Health Programme
• Apprenticeships
• Adult Education Budget
• Mental Health Trailblazer
• Destination Tracking

The following list explains our strategic aims and objectives, and the impact and/or contribution towards national, regional, and local priorities for learning and skills.

Ensure training provision matches labour market requirements and meets employer and investor needs, addressing skills gaps and shortages

We will conduct a refresh of our Local Strategic Commissioning Statement in line with the emerging priorities identified by LSIPs by engaging with local stakeholders and informed by the LSIP board. This will ensure our curriculum offer continues to respond to local economic need. The refreshed commissioning statement will be presented to the Skills Quality and Performance Governance Board and signed off by Cabinet.

This meets the national priority as outlined in the Skills for Jobs White Paper to ensure everyone, no matter where they live or their background can gain the skills they need to progress in work at any stage of their lives and the contributes to the Levelling Up White Paper to provide high quality skills courses. It will also respond to the regional and local priorities defined by the LSIP

Get more of our residents into sustainable, good employment and provide a joined-up support package that boosts employability skills

We will continue to focus our skills offer on activity that delivers sustainable job outcomes for learners and increase the validation of the job outcomes learners’ access as a result of our interventions to determine the accuracy and longevity of reported outcomes.

We will apply to deliver Skills Bootcamp activity in the areas of Engineering Green Skills, HGV and Customer Service in the Aviation sector to increase the availability of Level 3 activity which responds directly to identified employer needs with guaranteed job interviews for those who access this provision.

Increase digital inclusion for those who require these skills to improve life chances and access work

Explore options to embed contextualised digital skills into all vocational provision to ensure learners develop the necessary digital literacy and aptitude to operate effectively in their roles.

We will increase the availability of digital skills training through the use of non-regulated activity designed to complement regulated vocational course content to enable learners to develop the digital knowledge required for the sector.

This responds to the NELSIP priority to upskill digital capability across the North East, as an enabling skill and requirement for all jobs.

Target support towards those most likely to be disproportionately affected by poverty and financial insecurity

We will actively target provision towards areas which rank higher in terms of deprivation using the Index of Multiple Deprivation as a gauge. We will prioritise residents from these areas to respond to local socioeconomic need.

We will deliver this in concert with our commissioned supply chain, providing clear leadership and direction to ensure delivery continues to be prioritised towards those who will benefit from it the most and offered from locations where our priority audience reside and local touchpoints.

Boost aspiration for young people Improving opportunities for young people

NEET rates in South Tyneside double the national average, with particular issues at Year 11 and Year 13 and amongst 17-year-olds and young men.

Working closely with our Connexions service and commissioned Study Programme supply chain, we will contribute to the reducing the NEET group in South Tyneside by delivering 110 Study Programme places across the priority sectors of engineering, advanced manufacturing, construction, health & social care and customer service.

This responds to the priority within our South Tyneside Council’s Economic Inclusion and Skills Plan reduce.

On behalf of South Tyneside Council, it is hereby confirmed that the plan as set out above reflects an agreed statement of purpose, aims and objectives.

Corporation sign off date: 6 July 2023

Supporting documentation:

• South Tyneside Vision, Ambitions and Strategy
• South Tyneside Economic Assessment and Business Survey 2021
• JSNAA: Joint Strategic Needs and Asset Assessment
• North East Local Skills Improvement Plan (NELSIP)
• Ofsted Report
• South Tyneside Economic Recovery Plan
• Local Strategic Commissioning Statement