£4.2m of funding for education and skills training providers opens

Opportunity for education and skills training providers to bid for European Social Funding in four Local Enterprise Partnership  areas

Bidding process for £4.2m of funding opens on Monday 2 September 2019

Earlier this year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) ran a successful European Social Fund procurement, where 47 providers secured a total of £309 million to deliver high quality education and training across 34 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

These contracts started on 01 April 2019 and will run until 31 July 2021.

However, there were a small number of areas where none of the providers that bid for funding met the required criteria.

The ESFA is now running an additional targeted procurement worth £4.2 million, so that people living in these areas have the opportunity to benefit from the ESF by learning the skills they need to get on the path to a great career.

The LEP areas are

Skills Support for the Unemployed

• York North Yorkshire & East Riding LEP

Community Grants programmes

• Greater Lincolnshire LEP (Transition Area)
• North East LEP (More Developed Area)
• The Marches LEP (More Developed Area)
• The Marches LEP (Transition Developed Area)

To access the invitations to tender, interested parties need to register and follow the on-screen instructions.

The deadline for bids is Wednesday 2 October 2019 at 17.00.

Once the procurement has closed, the ESFA will send award notifications to successful providers. We will then enter a 10-day standstill period, in accordance with procurement practise.