n NEWS May 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com 10 THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT and industry must agree to boost investment in training and upskilling of both existing and future workers if the UK is escape its economic and productivity crisis, says an independent panel of experts that has been analysing the situation for ve months. The Industrial Strategy Skills Commission, set up last November by Make UK, has brought together businesses, educators and policy-makers to create a blueprint on how to train new and existing talent for British industry. Their conclusions have been published in a report aimed at solving the UK’s economic and productivity crisis by delivering a highly skilled workforce, trained in the latest technologies. UK manufacturing, the report argues, is in crisis, experiencing a dramatic demand for upskilling at the same time as the pipeline for workers and teachers is declining. Companies, it suggests, face a bleak landscape – an ageing workforce with early retirement on the rise, coinciding with a dramatic drop in apprenticeship starts – which have plummeted by 42% since the apprenticeship levy was introduced nearly eight years ago. The answer, the Commission believes, is for government and industry to agree a “Skills Covenant” that would include short-term measures such as creating £1.4bn of ringfenced skills funding. This would be raised by combining £800m from unspent employer contributions to the Growth and Skills Levy (currently being spent elsewhere by the Treasury) with revenues from the Immigration skills Charge – more than £650m last year – and spending it on providing skills as was intended when the charge was introduced. This combined total of £1.4bn could fund 40,000 new engineers, going a long way to lling the 55,000 skills gap in the sector, which is currently costing the UK economy an estimated £6bn every year. In turn, says the Commission, manufacturers will boost training through a workforce exchange, in which they will second sta to education providers. The sector will also develop an electronic work skills “passport”, which will move with employees as they change roles, and will keep a record of all of the qualications they gather during their careers. The 33-page report points out that a “dramatic” decline in the number of education providers oering high-value courses is exerting extra pressure. Many of these courses have become nancially unsustainable. Make UK believes that urgent legislation is needed to revise funding bands from the current £27,000 to £35,000. This would reect the real cost of delivering courses in engineering and skilled technical manufacturing. Rules should also be amended, the organisation suggests, to allow training providers to draw on levy funds for capital investment in machinery and equipment, making it easier to set up capital-intensive subjects such as engineering. The lack of training availability is also hampering the urgent need for upskilling across the sector. Make UK research shows that more than half of manufacturers intend spending more on upskilling and retraining their employees in the coming ve years – essential to growth and making inroads in the 55,000 skills gap in manufacturing. To boost essential retraining, it argues that employers should have access to a tax rebate for investment in accredited skills training in key sectors and occupations identied by the Industrial Strategy Skills Council. “Modern manufacturing and engineering are major drivers of the innovation needed to capitalise on the AI revolution and deliver on the Government’s growth agenda across new green skills technologies and opportunities,” says Robert Halfon, co-chair of the Industrial Strategy Skills Commission. “Yet all of this is at risk if we do not urgently ensure our skills system is properly t for the 21st century. “It is critical that we remove the barriers for Britain’s innovative companies from oering skills and apprenticeships, so that the new Growth and Skills Levy provides enough quality apprenticeship opportunities that lead to progression and good employment outcomes,” he adds. “That is why nancial incentives through a skills tax rebate, cutting bureaucracy and ringfenced skills funding will make a huge dierence. The skills covenant will put skills and apprenticeships rst and foremost in the minds of government and business.” £1.4bn of existing money could be used to train 40,000 new engineers ROCKWELL AUTOMATION has announced that it is working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help accelerate the digital transformation of manufacturing. They say that combining Rockwell's automation technologies and industry expertise with AWS's cloud capabilities will help manufacturers to drive their digital progress more effectively. “Manufacturers need flexible, scalable, and secure solutions to navigate today’s industrial challenges,” says Nicole Denil, Rockwell’s vice-president of global market access. “By collaborating with AWS, we are unlocking new opportunities for AI-driven insights, edge-to-cloud connectivity, and industrial automation advancements. This allows us to meet customers where they are and enable them to run on their cloud platform of choice.” As part of the relationship, Rockwell is expanding its FactoryTalk Hub softwareas-a-service, making its DataMosaix industrial DataOps software and Fiix computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) available via AWS’s Marketplace. More FactoryTalk Hub components will be added later this year. “Our collaboration with Rockwell Automation combines AWS’s cloud computing leadership with Rockwell's industrial automation expertise to deliver more comprehensive and powerful solutions,” says Ozgur Tohumcu, AWS’s general manager of automotive and manufacturing. “Together, we’re empowering manufacturers to make faster decisions and optimise operations, by transforming operational data into actionable insights . “We're not just deploying technology – we're creating a pathway for industrial enterprises to become more agile, efficient, and competitive in today's rapidly evolving industry." Commission co-chair Robert Halfon: it’s critical to remove barriers Rockwell works with AWS to transform manufacturing
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