“County has more work to do to boost skills” Cllr Church
Liberal Democrat County Councillor and, former Regeneration Cabinet Member at Northampton Borough Council, Richard Church, has today welcomed a report by Centre for Cities that showed Northampton has recovered better from the recession than other cities, but has warned that more work needs to be done to boost low skills. Northampton was in the bottom 10 cities, at 57th out of 64, for the percentage of residents with low skills, with 15.9% of the town's residents with low skills.
Cllr Church said "There is a lot of hard work that has gone in over the past 4 years from a number of agencies and political parties. However we must not be complacent. The fact that 15.9% of the town's residents have low skills is deeply concerning for future growth. The County Council must lead on this area, and has so far failed to do so."
"It is also unfortunate that the Leader of the Council continues to take a churlish attitude to the contributions of the South East Midlands Enterprise Partnership, who are responsible for the Enterprise Zone being created, potentially bringing up to 17,000 jobs. His cheerleading for NEP is somewhat misplaced as for 3 of the 4 years covering this independent analysis NEP did not exist as a Government recognised Enterprise Partnership. We also know from NEP's own targets that work to boost the skills of the local workforce has not been prioritised or delivered as expected."
"The Liberal Democrats believe that all contributions and partners should be recognised for their efforts, but the Conservatives are clearly more interested in justifying the millions of taxpayers money they have poured in to NEP, despite SEMLEP's existence and success for Northampton."