Amy Herdman’s long-held ambition has been to work in TV production. And 2020 is the year she decided to go for it. After nine years as a media coordinator - “there was a lot of spreadsheet copying and database analysis,” she says - she decided to resign to become a freelance TV runner.

“TV production has been something I have been particularly interested in for a long time,” she says.

The move has already paid off. Herdman has spent three weeks working on The Bidding Room, a new BBC entertainment show which she describes as being like “a combination of the Antiques Roadshow and Flog It”.

The decision to go freelance was inspired by a free six-week training programme designed to provide “underemployed” people with the skills that are in demand in the local economy.

“I’ve loved it,” Herdman says. “The course has opened doors a little bit.”

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And, with Channel 4 upping sticks and moving its head office to Leeds, as well as announcing a commitment to commission far more of its content from outside London, the creative sector is rapidly becoming the biggest growth industry in West Yorkshire.

At first sight, the scheme appears to be closely aligned to two of the government’s major skills policy initiatives.

The first is the national retraining scheme, a £100 million programme to help adults retrain into better jobs and be ready for future changes to the economy. Yet while this week’s Budget spoke of the National Skills Fund, the retraining scheme was conspicuous by its absence.

The second is skills devolution. This grants mayoral combined authorities control over budgets for areas like skills, with £630 million of adult education diverted via regional bodies over a two-year period.

As it turns out, the scheme that has transformed Herdman’s career hasn’t received a penny of support through either of these initiatives.

Skills devolution stalled

While Leeds City Region is one of the six areas taking part in the first wave of the National Retraining Scheme, its impact to date - according to those on the ground - has been minimal.

And though seven parts of the country - London, Manchester, the West Midlands, Liverpool, the West of England, Tees Valley and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough - have seen skills funding devolved, Leeds wasn’t among them. However, following the start of formal talks between ministers and West Yorkshire leaders in January, however, a £1.8 million devolution deal announced in the Budget - and signed the following day - including the £63 million annual adult education budget for the region.

Elections for the region’s first mayor are expected to take place next year - the end of a process that started under former chancellor George Osborne back in 2014.

These delays, though, have not prompted the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to idly twiddle its thumbs. Thanks to the European Social Fund, the £3 million [re]boot project is offering free courses for individuals who want to upskill, gain new qualifications and enter employment in the Leeds City Region.

The first programmes cover construction, digital, manufacturing and engineering and TV production, with 2,400 participants expected by the end of 2021.

While courses in highways vehicle technology result in a level 3 qualification, others instead focus on the skills needed by employers.

Tackling underemployment, not unemployment

The training programmes are being hosted by Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds City, Shipley and Wakefield colleges and Leeds Trinity University. Many take place on weekends and evenings, and are structured to be taken alongside an individual’s full-time employment, allowing them they continue to earn while they learn - and avoid alerting their employer that they have ambitions elsewhere.

Two courses have taken place since October, with 87 learners taking part to date.

For Roger Marsh, chair of the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership, helping graduates achieve their potential is key to the local economy.

“It’s a really important priority for us to ensure that people can find good-quality and rewarding employment - not just any job - and with too many people employed in roles where they’re not fully utilising their skills, we’re keen to do more to improve employed adults’ understanding of the career opportunities available to them,” he says.

While unemployment in the region is low, a more pressing concern is the number of people in insecure employment, underutilising their skills or working in sectors where jobs could be at risk from automation.

Reflecting local demand

The partnership is working alongside the national retraining scheme, Marsh adds. “Although we have reservations about whether a national campaign can ever resonate with people to help them make massive decisions about their futures, we are keen to extend the National Retraining Scheme’s information, advice and guidance offer to our learners. If the national offer is able to flex in order to reflect local demand, that would be a step forward.

“A campaign that is trying to make decisions about people’s futures needs to be relatable, it needs to be joined up with an offer that’s got a line of sight to real jobs in a real place. And provision that’s designed by employers. These are some of the key things the Future-Ready Skills Commission is arguing for. Skills have to have a local dimension if they’re to make a difference.

“With the vast majority of people who’ll be in work in 20 years already in work, adult retraining and upskilling needs to be as much of a priority as young people’s careers. Although we are aiming to retrain 2,400 people by December 2021 through our programme, there are far more who could benefit from something like this and we need to make it far easier for people to retrain and progress throughout their careers and their lives.”

And the way to do this, Marsh believes, is by continuing the roll-out of skills devolution to allow greater responsiveness to local economic need, so funding can be directed to where it will have the biggest impact.

“Our adult careers and retraining is externally funded and therefore time limited,” he adds. “We need to make sure there is continued support and advice and that we’re able to track people’s progress beyond the programme. There’s a strong argument that we need greater control over skills funding locally to make sure we can continue to offer schemes like this beyond the lifetime of European funding.”