Manufacturing Sector - Employer Led Skills Support

Cornwall Marine Network (CMN) has secured project funding through the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF), known locally as the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Growth Programme, from the European Union's European Social Fund for a project named Employer Led Skills (ELS) and is seeking to procure a new sub-contractor to deliver some aspects of the project in the Manufacturing sector.

One of the dominant contributory factors to the region's productivity and economic growth is the level of education, training and skills within the working age population. The attached Invitation to Tender seeks to address a range of issues concerning the development and upskilling of the Manufacturing workforce. It aims to help businesses to develop and grow, become more resilient and more productive.

There are approximately 1,300 Manufacturing units in C&IoS who employ around 15,500 (2017 data), this reflects a 16% reduction between 2012-2017. Overall, the wider Manufacturing sector accounts for almost 10% of the total workforce which is consistent with the GVA figures below.

The Manufacturing sector delivers almost £800m to the economy but by addressing low productivity this contribution could increase rapidly. Manufacturing experienced the highest sectoral growth in GVA per job from 2012-2017 at 24%.

It is important for applicants to ensure that proposals do not duplicate existing activities or activities that do not address market failure. ESF can only be used to achieve additional activity or bring forward activity more quickly. Applicants must be able to demonstrate that proposals are additional to activity that would have occurred anyway and/or enables activity to be brought forward and delivered more quickly than otherwise would be the case in response to the demand established by sectoral development work and needs analysis.

In order to address the issue that productivity across the sector lags behind that of England and the EU we need a focused programme of support in the Manufacturing sector to drive up growth in knowledge and skills and as such CMN expects to allocate up to £85,000 of ESF, inclusive of VAT, to support 300 participants to gain a range of new skills and qualifications.

To achieve this applicants will be required to establish a sector led skills development programme which will address the four key themes identified through the ESF Developing Skills for Business project as critical to the sector's sustainability and growth. The four themes are:

Applicants will be responsible for securing eligible match funding for the balance of costs in their proposed delivery models.

Additional information: Please ensure that you address all of the questions and points outlined in the specification, including the cross cutting themes of equality, diversity and sustainability.