"I love the way the innovative approach the Black Country has taken, they have taken the bull by the horns getting on with skills…" Tara Dillon, Chief Exeuctive CIMPSA

Active Black Country Partnership and the Black Country LEP launched UK's first Sector Skills Action Plan (SSAP) for sport and physical activity in September 2016. The Plan highlighted the sector's workforce needs and evidenced the role sport & physical activity can play in driving economic growth.

The SSAP has provided leading insight into the skill shortages across the sector allied with a set of recommendations to develop a workforce that is customer centric, inclusive and equipped with the right skills.

Over 100 employers, organisations, education and training providers were consulted across private, public, and third sectors to incorporate the breadth, range and scope of roles across the sector. Community, health and economic regeneration agencies were consulted to seek their views on the skill sets required to enable behaviour change in target populations. The consultation also incorporated a selection of employers from outside the sport & physical activity sector to identify their skill shortages and determine the role sport and physical activity can play in meeting the identified shortages.

The findings of the consultation showed :

• Non-Technical, soft skills represent the greatest skill shortage across the sectors combined workforce.
• There is a significant lack of definition regarding the scope of soft skills that are required.
• Sport and physical activity was identified to have the potential to meet non-sporting employer's skill shortages through the development of transferable skills.

The SSAP has defined the scope of required skills and developed 7 headline recommendations to address the skill shortages across the sector, equipping the workforce to engage with inactive communities and realise the enabling power of sport and physical activity to deliver socio-economic outcomes.

In the 2015 "Sporting Future" Strategy, the Government set out plans to transform the sport and physical activity workforce. The sector's workforce needs to be more representative of communities it aims to engage with and reflect a customer-centric approach that focuses on an individual's needs and motivations. Many of the recommendations through this plan respond to these new skill requirements.

Aligned to the recommendations from the new Sport Strategy are a number of significant changes to the skills, education, devolution and employment landscape. These present the Active Black Country Partnership and other Country Sport Partnerships with a unique opportunity to pioneer a new way of working to drive this agenda at a local level.

For more information please contact Ian Carey at Black Country Consortium – ian_carey@blackcountryconsortium.co.uk or 01384 471 137