TSL attended West Yorkshire Combined Authorities’ (WYCA) UKSPF Pillar 3 (Employment and Skills) Sounding Board on Wednesday 28 June.

The event was an initial ‘test the water’ conversation to get feedback on the outline shape of the programme. We thought we’d share some of the key points (we’ve referenced where you will find this information in the attached powerpoint slides)

• Delivery of the Employment and Skills theme will begin in April 24 and will be for 1 year only
• £4million pounds has been allocated to Employment West Yorkshire which is a partnership between WYCA and the 5 Local Authorities in the Mayoral Authority area
• Leeds will receive £800,000 for ‘hyper local’ employment support interventions

Future work to be tendered through WYCA

• WYCA currently plan to tender £14million of contracts
• There will be a wide range of interventions available through the funding (slides 18 – 20)

The opportunities (slide 30)

• Work and Health (slide 32) – focusing on supporting people that are not currently active in the labour market due to ill health
  • £4million total funding with a minimum bid size of £1 million
• Community (VCSE) Grants (slide 33) covering a wide range of different groups not active in the labour market
  • One lot of £4million for an organisation to administer the programme across West Yorkshire
    • The grant administering organisation will then onward fund organisations who bid to deliver discrete employment and skills projects
  • Youth Unemployment (slide 34) particularly focused on Young People Not in Employment Education and Training
    • One lot of £2 million

Timescales (slide 43)

• Invitation to Bid September
• Bids close Mid November
• January – bidders selected
• April 24 – delivery to commence

Participant feedback at the event

• Some participants were concerned that the size of the contracts will disadvantage smaller third sector organisations
• There was some debate about whether there is simply too much money to spend in this part of the programme. The alternative that was floated by WYCA colleagues was to move some investment out of Employment and Skills and into one of the other themes in the programme (Community and Place and Business Improvement)
• There was some debate about the Community Grants – if the main grant administering organisation is not in place until April 24, this means that organisations that are successfully bid to the fund will have less than a year to deliver their project.

Next Steps

TSL Is committed to sharing information about funding opportunities under the UKSPF scheme. We are also active in feeding back your views to colleagues at WYCA. If you would like to discuss any of the content of this item, please contact Richard.warrington@val.org.uk

Third Sector Leeds