Providers of adult education courses in Lancashire will be financially incentivised to help learners take advantage of their new skills to find a job.
That is one of the ways in which the county will use new powers coming its way later this year when it gains local control over its share of the Adult Skills Fund (ASF).
Lancashire’s devolution deal will see responsibility for the administration of the £40.8m cash pot pass from central government to the Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA) in August.
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The body has now agreed the changes it will make as part of that shift in an attempt to better benefit the 36,000 people supported by the ASF in the county each year, many of whom are unemployed and qualified below ‘level 3’ – meaning they do not have A-Levels or an advanced apprenticeship.
The amendments include setting aside an initial £100k from the budget to fund £200 payments to providers for each person they refer to the ‘Connect to Work’ or ‘Skills Bootcamps’ programmes, the latter of which includes a guaranteed job interview upon completion.
Dr. Michele Lawty-Jones, director of the Lancashire Skills and Employment Hub – which is part of the LCCA – said it was important to see “progression” for learners and to “improve employment outcomes” via the ASF.
She was speaking at a recent LCCA meeting during which the “flexibilities” offered by devolution were approved.
Grant-funded adult education providers in Lancashire will receive the same amounts in 2026/27 as they have done in the final year of the current Department for Education-controlled arrangement, in order to ensure stability.
However, Dr. Lawty-Jones said grant investment plans would be used to “nudge and shift” the provision on offer in line with the priorities set out in Lancashire’s strategic skills plan, which was approved by the LCCA last year.
That document identified the county’s “priority occupations” as being within the digital, manufacturing and engineering, health and social care, construction, hospitality, leisure and tourism, transport and distribution, farming and agriculture, and international trade sectors.
Under the new locally-led system, three percent of each provider’s grant will be ringfenced to test so-called “innovative delivery” of adult skills courses and see what works best.
Dr. Lawty-Jones suggested that such an approach could be harnessed to try to engage more of the county’s 18-24-year-olds, only “a small percentage” of whom currently access ASF support.
The skills plan noted the need for the ASF to help not just those who are out of work, but also the employed who might require a skills boost in order to further their careers. The new local arrangements will also ensure ASF assistance is offered to anyone who has been placed under “formal redundancy consultation”, regardless of how much they earn in their under-threat role.
Meanwhile, the Lancashire Skills and Employment Hub plans to reduce what it describes as the “long tail” of more than 200 adult education providers serving Lancashire, many of which are based beyond the county’s borders and deliver only small amounts of provision.
However, residents living on the county’s fringes will still be able to request Lancashire ASF support to attend courses in neighbouring local government areas.
The LCCA resolved that the vast majority of the soon-to-be-devolved ASF budget – £31.6m – should go in grant allocations to providers, while £5.7m will be used for targeted procurement exercises that will ”address gaps” in “priority sectors and groups”.
Just over £1m will cover the cost of managing the new localised set-up, which the LCCA was told was “essential to ensure robust governance, compliance, and delivery capability for devolved responsibilities”.
Adult skills formed a key part of the Lancashire devolution deal which was struck with the last Conservative government just over two years ago and rubberstamped by the Labour administration in September 2024.
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