New £515m funding pot for West Midlands skills

A new fund worth more than £500 million is set to be invested into skills training in the West Midlands over the next three years. The region's combined authority has finalised plans to allocate £515 million in funding with the aim of helping local people gain skills and qualifications, progress into jobs and support wider ambitions for inclusive green economic growth.

The new skills transformation plan will bring investment and programmes such as bootcamps in digital and healthcare. The West Midlands Combined Authority is also introducing a new innovation programme called 'Multiply' which has been designed to help adults in work improve their maths and support communities with financial literacy.

The authority's board has also approved plans to channel a proportion of the new investment through to deliver support for local businesses, bringing in new talent and navigating new challenges such as digitisation and moving to net zero. This follows the news that the West Midlands Combined Authority has trained more than 135,000 people to get higher level skills and take advantage of new job opportunities across the region over the last two years.

West Midlands Mayor Andy Street said: "As we bounce back from covid, linking up our local talent with the plentiful opportunities on offer in industry is absolutely central to my 100,000 jobs plan. That's why it really is such phenomenal news that our funding has been able to help train more than 135,000 people through the difficulties of the pandemic.

"Now, to build on that, we have a new landmark skills investment of more than half a billion pounds made possible thanks to the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. That means we can get even more people trained in the skills of the future to help them take advantage of the high-quality, well-paid jobs on offer.