VE Day: Council duties under the Armed Forces Covenant
As we mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, Geoff Wild, Legal & Governance Consultant, looks at the duties of councils under the Armed Forces Covenant.
Skills England 'needs time to prove itself'
06/05/2025 The agency created by the Government to boost post-16 skills in England needs a year to show whether it will be effective, a prominent educationalist says. |
Urgent need for teacher training amidst schools crisis
29/04/2025 The Government should provide £260m to fund a new 'national entitlement' to teacher training to help raise school standards, think tank says. |
Streeting: Care staff to be trained in ‘cutting-edge’ tech
09/04/2025 Social care workers will be trained to use the latest ‘cutting-edge technology’ to help improve the social care system, Wes Streeting has said. |
CCN: Planning legislation would ‘dilute’ local oversight
11/03/2025 Legislation aimed at speeding up planning decisions would ‘dilute’ the role of councillors on planning committees, warns the County Council Network (CCN). |
Devolution would help skills 'mismatch' - report
03/12/2024 Government should give local areas greater powers over skills to address the ‘mismatch' of people needed for future industries, Birmingham Uni has urged. |
Kendall: Local government to join up work opportunities
26/11/2024 Mayors and councils will be given powers to join up services locally to tackle worklessness, the work and pensions secretary will announce today. |
Fixing care’s recruitment and retention issue
31/07/2024 Ben Weatherall, co-founder and director of Curam, looks at what local authorities can do to fix the care sector’s recruitment and retention issue. |
New Advanced CPD Set to Combat False Fire Alarms
22/07/2024 Advanced is pleased to announce the launch of its latest Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course: Managing False Fire Alarms: Tools & Techniques. |
Care sector needs 540,000 workers by 2040
18/07/2024 The care sector will need 540,000 additional social care posts by 2040 to cope with the aging population, care workforce body Skills for Care estimates. |
Six tips to improve public services in the UK
15/07/2024 From social care and schools to bins and the criminal justice system, public services touch the lives of everyone. Here are six tips for improving them. |
Local Government Apprentice of the Year announced
24/05/2024 Sara Jenner-Akehurst from Cambridgeshire County Council has been named as the 2024 Local Government Apprentice of the Year. |
SkillGate’s Classroom Booking System - Training course booking made easy!
29/04/2024 Streamline your training course booking operations with SkillGate’s Classroom Booking System. |
UltraCrete wins Employment and Skills Award at RSTA Annual Conference
18/04/2024 UltraCrete are delighted to announce that they have been presented with the coveted Employment and Skills Award at the 2024 RSTA Annual Conference. |
LGA announces 2024/25 Sector Support programme
12/04/2024 The Local Government Association (LGA) has announced the 2024/25 Sector Support programme to help councils ‘deliver critical services to communities.’ |
UltraCrete partners with Salford City College
27/03/2024 A new UltraCrete and Salford City College Group partnership will see Highways Maintenance Skilled Operative Apprenticeship students become UCARS Accredited. |
National Apprenticeship Week: The importance of a national skills strategy
05/02/2024 Nichola Hay MBE, director of Apprenticeship Strategy and Policy at BPP, discusses the importance of a national strategy with a regional approach. |
Study reveals ‘worrying’ state of local government leadership
25/01/2024 Just over half of council leaders and managers believe their local authority isn’t ensuring accountability for failure, an alarming new study has revealed. |
Social care career reforms ‘only scratch the surface’
10/01/2024 The Government today announced new measures to improve the career prospects of social care staff but concerns remain that this ‘may only scratch the surface’. |
Skills shortage ‘putting brakes’ on net zero
12/12/2023 The skills shortage is undermining efforts to reduce carbon emissions and effectively tackle the climate crisis, local authority leaders in London have warned. |
VR training on coercive control rolled out
07/11/2023 An immersive training programme that aims to raise awareness of gender-based violence and support those affected has been rolled out in Greater Manchester and North Wales. |
County leaders call for ‘adult education revolution’
04/09/2023 County council leaders have urged the Government to ‘fast track’ devolution deals to help boost the number of people taking part in adult education. |
Councils face £18m bill from new housing standards
08/08/2023 Local authorities could be stuck with an £18m bill to implement new government housing standards, the Local Government Association (LGA) has warned. |
LGA: ‘Radical shift’ towards local employment support needed
25/07/2023 Council leaders have called for a ‘radical shift’ from centralised employment support after a consultation emphasised the benefits of 'local involvement'. |
Skills shortage set to worsen with end of European fund
21/07/2023 Local authority leaders have warned that the ongoing skills shortage could get worse as the European Social Fund (ESF) finishes at the end of this year. |
MPs call for devolution of employment support
19/07/2023 The delivery of support aimed at helping people into employment should be devolved to groups of local authorities, MPs have said. |
Government backtracks on ‘employment only’ adult education outcomes
17/07/2023 The Department for Education (DfE) has scrapped its plans to end funding for adult education courses that are not directly linked to employment outcomes. |
Skilled worker shortage undermining net zero drive
01/06/2023 A skilled worker shortage means that at the current rate of heat pump and insulation installation it could take ‘several hundred years’ to meet net zero. |
Council chiefs welcome £165m skills fund
25/05/2023 Local authority leaders have welcomed the launch of a £165m skills fund but say councils should be given more powers to help people into employment. |
Guidance to support social care digitisation published
18/05/2023 The Government has published new guidance to help local authorities and care providers develop digital skills and drive digital transformation. |
Government launches £500,000 know-your-rights scheme
19/04/2023 Social housing tenants in seven cities are to be offered a place on a Government-funded training scheme aimed at helping them hold their landlords to account. |
Council welcomes ‘significant’ £20m Blyth investment
24/02/2023 The Government has announced a multi-million-pound funding package to help spread opportunity and boost local pride in Blyth. |
Council chiefs call for devolution of skills powers
24/02/2023 Local authority leaders have called for the devolution of skills budgets and powers to help them support young people into education, employment or training. |
Solving the homelessness sector’s workforce crisis
14/02/2023 Rick Henderson, chief executive of Homeless Link, discusses the first ever accredited qualification for the homelessness workforce. |
Khan announces £14m to restore trust in Met
27/01/2023 The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has set out proposals for £14.2m of new funding to rebuild the trust and confidence of London’s communities in the Met Police. |
First ever qualification for homelessness workforce launched
24/01/2023 The first ever accredited qualification for the homelessness workforce has been launched to help frontline staff develop their skills. |
Be Part of a Net-Zero Future – BEIS-funded training available through the Retrofit Academy
23/01/2023 Retrofit Academy secures funding to deliver over 1200 retrofit courses in England to help the UK achieve its net zero goals by building a skilled workforce. |
Nine in 10 councils experiencing staffing issues
20/01/2023 Council leaders have warned that the workforce crisis is threatening local services as a survey reveals nine in 10 councils are experiencing staffing issues. |
Better together: how to retain IT talent in the public sector
21/12/2022 Arun Kumar, regional director at ManageEngine, looks at how the public sector can get over its digital skills problem. |
Government’s £4bn annual skills spend ‘failing to deliver’
14/12/2022 Council chiefs have called for an end to the centralised approach to training as report finds that the Government’s £4bn skills spend is ‘failing to deliver’. |
DWP urged to devolve employment support to councils
02/12/2022 Local authority leaders have called for all employment support to be devolved to councils rather than contracted out to large providers. |
How tech can help councils handle customer vulnerability
30/11/2022 Paul Mander outlines how local government can use tech to spot vulnerable individuals. |
Thousands of apprentices quit due to ‘poor quality’ of scheme
28/11/2022 Thousands of people who have taken up apprenticeships to help them develop new skills have dropped out due to the poor quality of schemes, research reveals. |
Social care vacancies up by a record 52%
11/10/2022 The number of vacant posts in adult social care has increased by a record 52% in one year, an alarming new report has revealed. |
Nearly half of teachers not confident teaching sex education
29/09/2022 Almost half of secondary school teachers say they don’t feel confident teaching sex and relationships education, a new survey has revealed. |
Council chiefs welcome call for £1bn skills funding
22/09/2022 Council leaders have welcomed a call to move away from the top-down approach to skills, and to provide communities with the funding needed to boost employment. |
£500m social care workforce fund approved
10/08/2022 The Government has announced a support package worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in an effort to tackle the social care staffing crisis. |
Councils urged to boost local digital skills
06/06/2022 Councils urged to do more to help small businesses with digital training as evidence suggests businesses are struggling with the social media revolution. |
Devolve powers to tackle jobs crisis, council chiefs say
17/05/2022 Local authority leaders have called on the Government to devolve more powers to councils to free them up to tackle the growing job crisis at the local level. |
Training carers key priority for social care sector
12/05/2022 Reform and training carers are two of the key priorities for the social care sector during the year ahead, according to the annual report of the CSW Lyn Romeo. |
Adult social care workforce receives £500m boost
05/04/2022 People working in adult social care in England are set to benefit from a £500m boost that will go towards improving the recruitment and retention of staff. |
Social housing staff training review confirmed
18/01/2022 The Government today confirmed a review of the training of social housing staff after receiving thousands of complaints in the wake of the Grenfell tragedy. |
Mayor Khan announces £600,000 fund to ‘rewild’ London
15/12/2021 Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has launched a new fund to help restore wildlife sites and create more natural habitats for plants and animals across the capital. |
Council chiefs call for devolution of skills powers
30/11/2021 Local authority leaders are urging MPs to support measures that would see councils have more say in the delivery of skills development at the local level. |
Government launches £7m flexible apprenticeship scheme
03/08/2021 Anyone looking to get experience and training to work in adult social care will now be able benefit from new flexible apprenticeships, the Government says. |
Homes England invites council officers to join summer training programme
17/05/2021 Homes England are inviting council officers to join a Summer Learning Programme aimed at sharing knowledge on topics that could enhance home-building efforts. |
UC claimants given access to longer work-related training
01/04/2021 An initiative aimed at increasing access to training for UC claimants will see an extension to the time people can receive UC during work-focused study. |
PM pledges to transform skills and training system
29/09/2020 The Prime Minister has outlined plans to transform the training and skills system to help the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic. |
|
Council cuts damaging ‘grassroots’ grass pitches
30/10/2019 Local authority austerity and budget cuts have had a damaging effect on ‘grassroots’ grass pitches, a groundskeeping organisation says. |
|
Funding to train nurses should be expanded to public health workers, council chiefs say
11/09/2019 Funding to train nurses should be expanded to cover public health workers including health visitors and school nurses, the Local Government Association says. |
