Help us to get out of this limbo
Mention the Sector Skills Development Agency to most people in the industry and it's likely that you will get a blank look. Not surprising, as it's another Government initiative which is changing the old order to something new.
Its significance for us lies in the fact that a Sector Skills Council (SSC) will probably replace the Hospitality Training Foundation (HTF) as the prime body responsible for driving training in the industry. But at the moment, we are in limbo. Significant Government funding for training in hospitality ceased in April. We need your support to press for an SSC to be established for this industry.
Briefly, Sector Skills Councils are being established to replace the 80 or so National Training Organisations (NTOs), of which the HTF was one. But only about 20 SSCs will be set up, each with a much wider remit and with public funding of some £1m a year to each SSC, with matching contributions from industry.
But an industry cannot set up its own SSC - it has to submit an expression of interest which has to be agreed by the Sector Skills Development Agency, followed by a detailed proposal and a business plan.
A steering group, involving all the main players in the industry, has taken an active role in trying to set up an SSC for the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism industry. An expression of interest to form an SSC has won significant employer support and was submitted in April.
This was returned by the agency with the request that the SSC should also cover culture and heritage. The steering group believes this is an impossibly wide remit and has said so. The expression of interest has been resubmitted and the agency will look at it next month.
Even if approval is given at that meeting, detailed proposals will have be drawn up together with a business plan. This will take more time. It is therefore unlikely that the industry's SSC will be operational until next spring - almost a year after the industry's NTO officially ceased to exist.
Meanwhile, NTOs are having to survive on their own resources. Employers, knowing that they are to be disbanded, are understandably reluctant to fund them as they have in the past. As a result, everything is operating in a vacuum.
This is bad news for the industry. Without an active NTO or SSC the industry's training momentum could be lost. We are putting pressure on the Government and on the agency to resolve this worrying delay.
Letters of support for our application should be sent to Christopher Duff, chief executive, SSDA, Callflex Business Park, Golden Smithies Lane, Wath-upon-Dearne, South Yorkshire S63 7ER.
The greater the support, the greater the pressure.
Bob Cotton is chief executive of the British Hospitality Association
