New City College to lead £6.7m skills partnership fund to train Londoners for jobs of the future

A major initiative to get Londoners back into work with the necessary skills for jobs of the future is being led by New City College, in partnership with 15 other colleges and education providers across the region.

The £6.7m Central London Forward Local Skills Improvement Fund (LSIF) will support all Londoners to develop the skills they need to access the jobs that employers are trying to fill.

The LSIF has been provided by the Department for Education to help education providers respond to the May 2023 Local Skills Improvement Plan created by Business LDN. They identified that all sectors in London are struggling to recruit people with the skills they need to grow.

New City College, working with the project partners, will work to ensure that post-16 training provision is better matched to employer skills demand and the needs of London’s economy.

This will help employers meet their skills gaps, fill vacancies and ultimately get more Londoners – including those from black and minority ethnic communities – into jobs.

The project will run from November 2023 to March 2025 and the two strategic issues being prioritised are Digital Skills and Green Skills.

Examples of projects that the partnership will be delivering, include:

• Creating an online Virtual Reality green community
• Creating low carbon learning spaces
• Training staff and employers in carbon literacy
• Teaching skills to retrofit buildings (cladding, insulating, heating systems, electrical generation systems)
• Training employers to install ground and air source heat pumps
• Building immersive classrooms
• Installing Creative Industries Skills Hubs

New City College has already launched two Renewable Energy labs complete with cutting edge technology at the Hackney campus and Rainham Construction and Engineering campus, both of which provide green skills training for the region’s workforce.

These centres will provide huge benefits to employers and the workforce in the challenge for a new way of working to meet cleaner energy and net zero targets.

The 15 partners working with New City College to deliver the Central London Forward Local Skills Improvement Fund are:

• Capital City College Group
• South Thames Colleges Group
• South Bank Colleges
• United Colleges Group
• NCG (Newcastle College Group)
• Morley College
• Mary Ward Settlement
• Working Men’s College
• Christ the King Sixth Form College
• Ada (the National College for Digital Skills)
• BSIX (Brooke House Sixth Form College)
• St Charles Sixth Form
• St Francis Xavier Sixth Form College
• Access Creative College
• Westminster Adult Education

New City College is also a partner college in the LSIF bid for the Local London region, which is led by London South East Colleges and brings together a collaborative partnership of 12 FE colleges, Higher Education providers, Adult Education Providers and Local Authorities. This partnership has been allocated £6.5m of LSIF funding to also deliver improved green and digital skills training with new pioneering facilities.