Skills audits ‐ a framework for local economic development

Summary

Skill creation and utilisation are important to local economic development as they represent an area in which local authorities have a track record of intervention and some very real powers, through their ability to influence parts of the training infrastructure. There is, of course, no direct causal link between changes to the training system and local economic performance. Fine‐tuning the training infrastructure to meet identified needs in the labour market must be recognised as a necessary not a sufficient condition for creating or retaining jobs.

In providing an organising framework for a skills audit we have emphasised the four dynamic elements of a local skills pool: utilised skills, under‐utilised skills, and the depletion and replenishment of skills. From our initial run through of the framework several factors already emerge as important considerations ‐‐ the need to try to establish an age profile of skilled workers, the desirability of providing a .local technology profile and the need to foster and maintain responsiveness in the training system to changing skill needs. This latter aspect requires local initiatives to improve signalling between demand and supply for training.