Warrington skills commission 2023

Foreword

Welcome to the official Warrington Skills Commission report 2023, which sets out the vision for a successful future for our workforce and economy.

It was in 2013 that we carried out our last review of skills in Warrington, and it has been pleasing to see a number of the recommendations of that report evolve into practice – for example, through the establishment of the Warrington Pledge, connecting businesses with over 20 schools and supporting the transition of our younger generation into the world of work.

However, much has changed in the last decade and this refreshed look at our strategic needs comes at the right time.

Our 2023 report reflects on the progress made since our last review, before looking at the evolution needed to ensure the continued growth of Warrington’s economy. It explores the challenges and opportunities ahead of us and sets out the framework for ensuring local people are equipped with future-fit employment skills and training.

This report provides us with a clear way forward, with a strong focus on collaboration, preparing for net zero, responding to rapid technological progress and an ageing population and delivering skills training which aligns with the employment needs of the future.

As such, it will be an invaluable tool, as we continue our work together to deliver future economic sustainability and growth for Warrington, and ensure that this is something that local people can participate fully in.

As Chair of the Warrington Skills Commission, I would like to express my thanks to our commission members, expert witnesses, our consultant Autonomy, Warrington employers and employees, and our residents, for your support and participation.

Together, we have created an important document which I believe will leave a lasting legacy, helping to shape local and national policy, and guiding investment in skills and training for many years to come.

Professor Steven Broomhead MBE

Chief Executive of Warrington Borough Council and Chair of the Warrington Skills Commission

Key takeaways

The commission

The 2023 Warrington Skills Commission was established with the intent of reviewing employment skills in Warrington
It was established with the intent of leading the public debate on skills, and helping to secure the economic success of the borough.
Following the last commission in 2013, this commission is committed to involving key stakeholders, including employers, educators, learners and employees, from across Warrington, as well as distilling the important local, national and international evidence.

Hiring and applying for work in Warrington

During the Brexit negotiations period and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, the demand for workers in Warrington was lower than the wider region of North West England and the country as a whole. However, in the post-pandemic period, Warrington's job market surpassed the growth rate observed in both England and the North West, indicating a positive shift in the local labour market.
The industries with the greatest job creation in Warrington between 2019 and 2023 were Health and Social Work, Wholesale and Retail, and Professional Scientific, much the same as the North-West and England as a whole.
Warrington is, on average, the fourth highest paying locality in the North-West. Of the town's four main skills profiles, 'Science and Technology' and 'Operative and Craftsmanship' offer the highest wages.
There has been significant progress made on alignment in skills provision since the vision set out in the 2013 report. Twenty schools in Warrington are now signed up to The Pledge initiative, run by the Careers and Enterprise Company; this includes all mainstream secondary schools, all FE colleges and most SEND/ AP schools.

Skills in Warrington

Across the top 10 job categories in Warrington - which includes Health Care & Nursing, Engineering, Logistics and Warehouse, IT, Trade and Construction, Accounting & Finance, Sales, Social Work, Admin and Teaching - the most common skill demanded by employers was 'communication', which is just the tip of the iceberg of emphasis on soft skills.
Accounting & Finance, Healthcare & Nursing and Social Work Jobs tend to have the highest soft-skill score levels, while Logistics & Warehouse and Trade & Construction tend to have the lowest soft-skill score levels.
In terms of skills profiles, Science & Technology and Management & Health require higher levels of competency in soft skills than 'Care & Services' and 'Operative & Craftsmanship'.

Perspectives on the ground

Workshops and surveys were conducted with a variety of stakeholder groups in Warrington, allowing them to contribute their perspectives to the Commission and raise issues that they felt important.

In our workshops, participants consistently raised a number of key themes, issues and proposals:

There are opportunities to improve workplace inclusivity via ethical employment practices
A need to improve our approach to winning and distributing funding in the third sector & education
There is a willingness to build collaboration and co-production
The pandemic is still having an effect on mental health and soft skills
Warrington has a buoyant, mixed economy
Transport from Warrington to other locations is very good, but
internal connections poor
SMEs face barriers to upskilling staff and need additional support
The apprenticeship levy is not always available when needed and needs organisation
16-19 year olds are encountering mismatches between aspirations and availability
Students want more engaging careers and soft skills training
Mid-career workers also need guidance
Digital skills are life skills, which especially affect those outside of education
There are a shortage of applicants to the care sector as pay is very low
Service providers and businesses could benefit from a greater understanding of green jobs

Futures to prepare for

The report also makes some forecasts about long-term industry and specific occupational growth, as well as considering the kinds of social and socioeconomic changes Warrington should be prepared for:

an ageing population
the climate crisis
the ongoing development of digital technologies.

Recommendations

Warrington has responded to the challenges of the twenty-first century with resilience and, in many cases, has fared better than other places in the UK. If the town wants to respond as well to future challenges as it has to those of the recent past, it needs an agile skills policy, built for the growing challenges of our time. With this in mind, our recommendations are divided into three key categories: collaboration, alignment and preparation.

Students sat around a table

_{Photo provided by Warrington and Vale Royal College}

Collaboration

Work with partners across the subregion to seek a new regional devolved skills settlement from national government
Enable a 'place based' focus and expand coordination between stakeholders via a new strategy skills body for Warrington
Consolidate a single online skills portal
Improve learner engagement in skills information
Conduct representative polling for future skills reviews via a polling agency and collect comprehensive destination data for learners leaving Warrington
Help employers to take advantage of and collaborate on the apprenticeship levy

Alignment

Maintain a vision of skills training aligned with employer needs
Target key growth areas for skills provision, specifically information technology, logistics and e-commerce, green industries, retrofit work and care work.
Replenish skills that are ageing out of the labour market
Offer soft skills training to all learners and support learners in demonstrating them to employers
Celebrate fair employment practices via a fair employment charter
Promote Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Warrington
Begin breaking down barriers to training before KS2
Conduct more regular skills reviews and analysis

Preparation

Net zero

Adopt a forecast-led skills strategy
Create a retrofit-ready workforce
Improve access to skills training through public transport
Offer green training provision across education

Care economy

Support 'Warrington Together'
Address the cause of recruitment and retention difficulties such as low pay and poor working conditions in the sector
Offer regular training opportunities and promote greater awareness of these

Digital futures

Offer core digital skills training for all school age leavers
Make digital skills readily accessible to adult learners and the employed
Establish digital training initiatives for the economically inactive and unemployed
Build automation resilience into Warrington's skills provision

Introduction to the abridged report

The 2023 Warrington Skills Commission was established with the intent of reviewing employment skills in Warrington, in order to lead the public debate on skills, and help to secure the economic success of the borough. Following on from the previous Commission, which published its report in 2013, this commission is committed to involving key stakeholders, including employers, educators, learners and employees, from across Warrington, as well as distilling the important local, national and international evidence.

This commission represents an opportunity for reflection on the last decade of education, training and work in Warrington. As described by Cllr Tom Jennings, ten years after the 2013 commission, this commission and report aspire to, “help set the framework for further economic success by increasing opportunities for our people to get future-fit employment skills and training.”¹

Key themes have emerged in the process of consulting key stakeholders for the report. It is clear, over what has been a difficult and resource-limited decade, that collaboration has got us further than competition in many areas. Working together represents the best opportunity for bringing resources into Warrington and creating shared prosperity. At the same time, many key observations of the last report remain present in the minds of employers, educators and learners: in particular the need to align training to demand from the labour market.

This abridged version of the report presents an overview of its key findings (the 'story' of the report), alongside its recommendations

For a precise skills analysis specific to Warrington we utilise ASPECTT, a database developed by Autonomy to offer granular portraits of every occupation in the UK. For any Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) occupation code, ASPECTT offers a detailed breakdown of the abilities, skills, expertise, technologies and tasks required for the role.

Warrington's specific skills profiles

Drawing on ASPECTT and analysing the labour market data for Warrington, we have derived four main skills profiles demanded in the local employment market.² Skills profiles group workers not by industry or sector, nor by specific job titles, but by the mix of skills required for their work.³ In short, this method groups kinds of work together, based on the skills utilised on the job, rather than the usual labels used.⁴ It allows us to describe Warrington's labour market in terms of its skill requirements, and foregrounds skills compositions which more closely reflect those used in work.

As such, these profiles describe specific distributions of skills that are generally demanded within the Warrington labour market. These skills profiles are unique to the Warrington labour market, and analysis of a different region would produce different skills profiles. Warrington's four main skills profiles are:

Management & Health: The most common competencies for these occupations include communication, problem solving, time management, organisational skills, teamwork, leadership, interpersonal skills. 'Management & health' covers a wide range of senior decision-making occupations across various sectors, including customer service, finance, hospitality, leisure, healthcare, legal, education, welfare, therapy, housing, business, media, and transport.
Operative & Craftsmanship: This skills profile covers a wide range of roles and skills, largely in sectors involving physical labour, from supervision and assistance to more skilled trades. It includes occupations like Construction and Building Trades, Process Operatives, Vehicle Trades, Metal Machining, Fitting and Instrument Making Trades, Electrical and Electronic Trades.
Science & Technology: This skills profile is often demanded by research and development in Architecture, IT, Engineering for instance. Common competencies among these occupations include problem solving, critical thinking, communication, organisation, interpersonal skills, and technical expertise.
Care & Service: This could be 'care' of clients in the retail sector, for instance, or patients in the healthcare sector. A diverse set of roles fit into 'Care & Service', such as food preparation and hospitality, road transport driving, health associate professions, administration, retail sales, animal care and control, housekeeping and related services, leisure and travel services, hairdressing, cleaning, protective services. The skills which unite these roles include being helpful, having a friendly manner, providing information and assistance, and resolving customer complaints.

If we track the evolution of Warrington's Labour market over the past decade, we can see its distribution has remained somewhat stable. The labour force was at its largest shortly before the Covid pandemic in 2019 and has remained relatively steady in the last ten years. As Figure 1 shows below, Professionals and Associate Professionals have remained the most prevalent occupation categories throughout this period, while 'Care & Service' and 'Management & Health' have remained the most prevalent skills profiles.

Figure 1 - Warrington labour force composition, 2013-2023. Occupation categories vs. skills profiles. Autonomy calculations with Annual Population Survey, Local Enterprise Partnerships areas projections.

As shown in Figure 2, Professionals and associate professionals are in high demand, while the 'Operative & Craftsmanship' and 'Science & Technology' skills profiles have a slightly higher proportion of overall demand compared to other profiles. This will, in part, be a consequence of the different ways in which jobs with different skill sets are advertised. Some jobs are more likely to be advertised through word of mouth and leaflets, whereas other jobs are more likely to be posted online, and be captured in Adzuna's dataset.

Figure 2 - Warrington 2022 labour demand composition, occupation categories vs skills profiles. Autonomy calculations with Adzuna.

Hiring and applying for work in Warrington

The Adzuna online job search engine offers a rich pool of data on online job advertisements, applications and hiring across the UK. Drawing on the Adzuna dataset, we are able to construct an analysis of hiring and applying for work in Warrington, and contrast this with the wider North West and England.

Figure 3 - Hiring demand. Autonomy calculations with 2019-2023 national, regional and subregional Adzuna Data.

_{Photo provided by Warrington and Vale Royal College}

Skills in Warrington

Displaying our evaluation of job descriptions across the top 10 fulltime job sectors, Figure 4 shows that communication is consistently the most prevalent, sought after skill on the part of employers.⁵ Depending on the job sector, other skills are also regularly mentioned.

For Healthcare & Nursing and Social Work jobs, employers commonly mention compassionate and personal care as desirable skills; for Engineering, Trade and Construction and Logistics jobs, health and safety knowledge is commonly mentioned; and for IT jobs, employers commonly request that applicants demonstrate skills in understanding and software development.

It is clear from this data, and from Workshops with key stakeholders, that soft skills have become important to employability across all sectors of Warrington's economy. Equally, soft skills have, during the pandemic years, represented a challenge area for various jobseekers (including students).

Most demanded soft skills in healthcare & nursing

Most demanded skills in Healthcare & Nursing

Most demanded soft skills in engineering

Figure 4 - Skills most frequently mentioned in job description across two sectors: Healthcare & Nursing and Engineering. Autonomy calculations with Adzuna unique job ads database.

Using ASPECTT, we can analyse job vacancy data and determine which soft skills are most in demand in Warrington.

The following two Figures (5 & 6) reveal various aspects of soft skills in Warrington’s labour market. They demonstrate which soft skills are in demand in specific sectors and across a range of skills profiles. The ‘level’ - on the y-axis - relates to the level of skill required for that particular soft skill (listed on the x axis). The different coloured dots relate to different job categories. For example, you can see that ‘Social work’ (the light blue dot) requires a much higher skill level for ‘assisting and caring for others’ than other job categories.

Figure 5 offers a detailed portrait of soft skills across the top 10 job categories in Warrington, and demonstrates that Accounting and Finance, Healthcare & Nursing and Social Work Jobs tend to have the highest soft-skill score levels, while Logistics and Warehouse and Trade & Construction tend to have the lowest soft-skill score levels.

Figure 5 - Soft skill demand level per job sector. Autonomy calculations with ASPECTT and Adzuna data.

Figure 6 looks at the core skills profiles of Warrington identified in this study. It reveals a consistent pattern: skills profiles such as 'Science & Technology' and 'Management & Health' have a higher level of soft skills than other skills profiles such as ‘Care & Service’. This trend persists across all soft skills categories with a single exception – Assisting and Caring for Others, for which the 'Care & Service' profile exhibits the greatest significance.

Figure 6 - Soft skills per skills profile. Autonomy calculations using ASPECTT and Adzuna data.

Key themes from workshops and interviews

Six workshop sessions were held in April and May 2023. Each gave a platform to a different key stakeholder group in Warrington, allowing them to contribute their perspectives to the commission: education providers, employers, those facing barriers to employment, young people aged 11-15 and young people aged 16-18+. An additional general session sought the views of a range of stakeholders, including representatives from a recruitment company, the Trade Union Congress, the local council, support services for disabled people and a member of the public.

Below are key themes drawn from across these sessions:

Ethical practice and collaboration

There are opportunities to improve workplace inclusivity via ethical
employment practices
A need to improve our approach to winning and distributing funding in the third sector & education
There is a willingness to build collaboration and co-production
The pandemic is still having an effect on mental health and soft skills

Warrington’s economy

Warrington has a buoyant, mixed economy
Transport from Warrington to other locations is very good, but internal connections poor
SMEs face barriers to upskilling staff and need additional support

Education

The apprenticeship levy is not always available when needed and
needs organisation
16-19 year olds are encountering mismatches between aspirations and availability
Students want more engaging careers and soft skills training

Work

Mid-career workers also need guidance
Digital skills are life skills, which especially affect those outside of education
There are a shortage of applicants to the care sector as pay is very low
Service providers and businesses could benefit from a greater understanding of green jobs

The future of work in warrington: three key areas

Our moment is one of serious challenges and significant opportunities. The climate crisis, rapid technological development and an ageing population pose challenges unprecedented in human history.
But they also offer a chance to change society for the better. Transforming the economy into one where sustainability, care and technological efficiency are central need not be disruptive.
Ensuring that such enormous changes take place smoothly will require significant planning and investment in the kinds of skills that support this new economy.

1) An ageing future

The UK has an ageing population. Currently, around 18.6% of the population is aged 65 and over.⁶ By 2043, nearly a quarter of the population are predicted to be over 65.⁷ Warrington’s ageing population is growing more rapidly than the national average. Nearly 20% of Warrington’s residents are now over 65.⁸ This represents an increase of 24.5% between 2011 and 2021, a figure which is well above the national average of 20%.⁹ On top of this, the largest proportion of Warrington’s population in terms of age are over 50.

Figure 7 - Projected supply of workers with Care & Service skills in Warrington and the potential demand (with number of over 65 year olds as a proxy for demand); Ratio of Care & Service workers to Warrington’s elderly population. Autonomy’s calculations

As Figure 7 demonstrates, there is a significant discrepancy between Warrington’s current and projected elderly population and the number of current and projected Care and Service workers. This is largely due to the fact that the pace of growth of the elderly population is not mirrored by an equivalent expansion in health and care provisions. This crisis is set to become critical in the early years of the coming decade.

2) A green future

The UK Government has set out its strategy to meet net-zero by 2050. This will bring a major transformation of the UK economy from one still largely dependent on fossil fuels to one organised around sustainable energy. It will require massive investment in new infrastructure and jobs, and the skills and training these jobs require. Changes in the local economy have the potential to be disruptive unless a comprehensive plan is delivered to reskill and train workers across a variety of sectors in preparation for these new industries.

Retrofitting existing housing and office stock represents an area of potential job growth that would both help to make Warrington’s local economy greener and provide jobs to the town’s residents. Retrofit work has significant potential as an area of green job growth in Warrington, not least because 40% of its housing stock is at or below EPC D rating, and over 11% of its households are currently in fuel poverty.¹² There are a number of existing occupations present in Warrington’s labour market that include skills that are crucial to retrofit jobs, in particular Electrical and Electronic Trades, Construction Operatives, and Engineering Professionals, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8- Score of best skill-fit for retrofit work by occupation. Autonomy analysis using ASPECTT and ONS.

3) A digitised future

Our age is one of profound technological change. Over the last four decades, new technologies in the workplace have transformed the UK economy. Meanwhile, the growth of digital connectivity has been rapid – between 2005 and 2020, the number of households in the UK with internet access grew from 55% to 96%.¹³ By some definitions, in 2019, the digital economy represented over 26% of gross value added.¹⁴ Digital technology promises to drive the labour market, improve care services, enhance customer and client experience, empower communities, and create a better connected, more efficient economy. It has also been a double-edged sword, creating both new high skill technical jobs and low skill ‘gig work’.

Of all the new digital innovations, AI represents both the greatest promise and largest threat to economies the globe over. Some predictions suggest that AI will add as much as $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.¹⁵ It presents numerous opportunities and challenges for the digital future of work, and has the potential to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, personalise experiences, augment skills, and create new job roles. Recent large language models (LLMs) and generative AI studies predict that the technology will have substantial impacts on the labour market.¹⁶ LLMs could potentially affect up to 25% of tasks across all wage brackets and sectors in the UK.¹⁷

At its highest level of roll out, generative AI has the capability to automate two thirds of current jobs, possibly substituting a quarter of current work, which equates to around 300 million full-time jobs globally. These impacts hinge on AI capabilities, task complexity, the extent of automation, and the pace of AI adoption. A recent Goldman Sachs¹⁸ (2023) study lists the occupations more likely to be affected. As shown in Figure 9, we build on this research to estimate that 14% of the job demand in Warrington could be disrupted by these advances in AI. Additionally, 22% of the currently employed labour force is projected to face high exposure to these technological shifts.

Figure 9 - Job opportunities and existing jobs in Warrington: Exposure to AI automation. Autonomy calculations with Eloundou, Tyna(2023), Adzuna and Annual Population Survey, Local Enterprise Partnerships areas projections.

Another study listed activities and sectors that are more likely to be affected by language models like ChatGPT.¹⁹ This study found that both AI models, such as ChatGPT, are more impactful on traditional office and managerial jobs (many of which are now done remotely). Figure 10 breaks down the automation risk associated with ChatGPT-4 by occupation. The sectors in Warrington that are projected to be most affected by the advance of AI technologies include Accounting & Finance, IT, Property, Creative & Design. These sectors, due to their dependence on data management, analytical tasks, or repetitive administrative tasks, may experience significant changes in job demand and structure as AI technologies become ever-more prevalent.

Figure 10 - Sectors predicted to be affected by ChatGPT-4. Autonomy calculations with Goldman Sachs AI-vulnerability sectors estimates.

Recommendations

We know Warrington has a strong economy: in the years after the global financial crisis Warrington fared better than the UK as a whole (although this trend was disrupted in 2020, an unusual year for the labour market). After the pandemic, and amid the Brexit negotiations period, indications also suggest a stronger bounceback in Warrington than the North West or the UK as a whole.

This is not accidental: the town has a diverse industrial base, and a history of rising to the challenge of training workers for an evolving world. This has worked best when Warrington’s skills providers have worked together to cover the diverse and changing training needs of the town and its employers. Warrington has firm ground to build upon, but the coming years will not be easy. If the town wants to respond as well to future challenges as it has to those of the recent past, it needs an agile skills policy, built for resilience. With this in mind, our recommendations are divided into three key categories: collaboration, alignment and preparation.²⁰