Council staff 'unable to gain new qualifications'

7 Sep 10
Stretched councils are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for staff to gain new qualifications in work time, Public Finance has learned. This is prompting fears that workforces will lack 'critical' skills in future
By David Williams

7 September 2010

Stretched councils are finding it increasingly difficult to pay for staff to gain new qualifications in work time, Public Finance has learned. This is prompting fears that workforces will lack ‘critical’ skills in future.

Ian Briggs, senior fellow at the Institute for Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham, said the public spending squeeze is stopping councils releasing their most able staff to learn part-time during the week.

He told PF: ‘We spend a lot of time talking to quite senior people, and they say the problem is how you get away from work on a regular basis. It’s becoming more and more challenging as the human resource diminishes.

‘Even when we’re going through some incredibly austere times, there’s still a critical need for people to learn and develop. Education is expensive, but ignorance is even more expensive.’

Briggs added that his department was looking to move more of its programmes to weekends to meet rising demand for out-of-hours study. These include postgraduate courses in public management or strategic commissioning.

Donald Cameron, Unison’s membership development officer for learning, said the shift to training outside working hours disadvantaged people on lower pay grades.

‘The key thing is people’s ability to keep up to date – particularly in local government, there is almost constant change in how services are organised and the legal framework in which they operate

‘You have an ageing workforce, who are receiving almost no training at all. It becomes more difficult for them to deal with new technology and bureaucratic changes.’

Nigel Carruthers, programme manager at Local Government Employment and Development, part of the Local Government Association Group, agreed that the problem is becoming more acute.

The Local Government Workforce Survey, whose figures only go as far as the end of last year, found that the trend is well established, with just 1.4 ‘off the job’ training days per employee on average in 2008/09 – the lowest figure since 2002.

Carruthers said: ‘I think progressive employers recognise that cutting training or development in one fell swoop really isn’t the option… you need to consider the effect that has on productivity and staff engagement.’

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top