Local industrial strategy and skills policy in England: Assessing the linkages and limitations – a case study of the Sheffield City Deal

Abstract

This paper examines changes in local economic development policy which occurred between 2010 and 2015, with a focus on the relationship between industrial strategy and skills policy. Under the Coalition Government, Local Enterprise Partnerships were established and tasked with facilitating local growth, and to do so many identified a set of (potential) growth sectors for industrial strategy to support. These sectors tended to be drawn from a relatively narrow range of industries which therefore often excluded a large proportion of the local economy. An important focus of the support for growth sectors for many has been through an ambition to influence the local skills system. Skills policy more broadly has been an important dimension of devolution, and a number of City Deals have included elements of skills policy. Echoing previous national policy however, the focus of local concerns with skills under devolution has been framed largely with reference to skills gaps and shortages. While specific skills gaps and shortages can be identified, this paper questions whether this default position is reflected widely, and as such, if a narrow focus on skills supply is a sufficient approach. It is argued that to support local growth across a broad base, greater attention needs to be paid to stimulating employer demand for skills through better integrating industrial and innovation policy with skills policymaking across a wider section of the local economy. To support these arguments we present a case study of the Sheffield City Deal.

Public policy for addressing the low-skills low-wage trap: insights from business case studies in the Birmingham city-region, UK

“…The LSEq has been used in different ways since its inceptionincluding to describe the situation of individual employers (Edwards et al, 2009) and economic sectors (Wilson & Hogarth, 2003). Recently the LSEq has also been increasingly used to describe the skills and employment outcomes in local and regional economies (Dawley et al, 2014;Sissons & Jones, 2016).…”

Agglomeration externalities of fast-growth firms

“…Thanks to these detailed and comprehensive data, we can identify the incidence and distribution of fast-growth firms across the UK regions and industries in the UK using alternative measures. There is an ongoing debate over the merits and drawbacks of different definitions of fast-growth firms based measures are only modestly correlated, and different definitions produce different subsets of the business population (Daunfeldt et al, 2014;Du & Bonner, 2017;Shepherd & Wiklund, 2009). Hence, in this study we examine two different fast-growth definitions, based on employment and productivity growth, to capture the top performers in terms of different growth mechanisms.…”

Decentralisation Versus Territorial Inequality: A Comparative Review of English City Region Policy Discourse

“…[71], p. 21. By contrast, rather than public investment in supply-side or labour mobility initiatives alone, a policy focus on skills demand, employer-side intervention, and multi-stakeholder capital projects (i.e., HS2 academies in the West Midlands, linking of HE, industry and local labour, and skills in Sheffield City Region) is also promoted as a strategy to address skills mismatches, lack of quality jobs, and growing in-work poverty observed in England [72,73].…”