Focus Central TEC is the newly created Training & Enterprise Council (TEC) formed in April 1997 through a merger of CENTEC and CILNTEC. Its work remit covers the nine central London boroughs. In addition to Islington these are Camden, Hackney, City, Southwark, Lambeth, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham. In its 3 yearly Corporate Plan (1997-2000) it intends to spend 150 million to achieve its objectives.
A) ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
TECs are one of the government's main agencies in the delivery of a highly skilled workforce and competitive enterprises. Board members are drawn largely from the private sector (of FC's 14 board members, 9 are CEOs drawn from the private sector including Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, Robson Rhodes, Marks & Spencer, Reuters UK, Channel 4 Television, Eclipse Group, Meridian, Serviceteam Holdings & Katherine Hamnett Design). In addition to its Board, its 100 staff, Focus Central's perspective on local economic development for itself and its partners is shaped by a number of TEC Partner forums. These include a CEOs Forum, an Economic Development Forum, and an Education Forum. There are also partner sub groups tackling particular issues including Long Term Unemployment, Lifelong Learning, Business Competitiveness, and Business Education Links.
B) CURRENT STRATEGY
Focus central TEC's contribution to local economic development is directed towards education and training interventions to improve the employability of Central London's workforce and to work with business to improve their own training and business practices, and in meeting their business support and skills needs. As with the LBI, Focus Central is recognising that employment problems, regeneration and re-structuring, will require a greater commitment to a partnership model of local economic development.
The 3 building blocks of FC's strategy are
1 Ensuring that players contributing to London's competitiveness continue to enhance their understanding of the local economy through research and analysis
2 Providing an agreed framework for local competitiveness, from which individual players can construct their strategies for contributing to London's competitiveness
3 Agreeing partner roles for building business competitiveness, strengthening the skills of the workforce and ensuring contributions to local competitiveness
Within this framework FC will perform different roles : as lead agency, as a key partner, and as a support agent.
C) ACTIVITIES
FC is the lead agency in delivering high quality training, securing business investment in HRD, undertaking skills audits and research into identifying skills gaps and SME contributions. FC is a key partner in area regeneration, sector development, inward investment and building on existing alliances with education and training institutions to agree priorities for raising levels of attainment and commitment to individual learning. FC acts as a support agent through research, planning expertise and in-kind resources.
Its work in local economic development will be looked at under a number of headings below:
1 Building Business Competitiveness
FC's work in building business competitiveness accounts for 20% of its expenditure. In this strand of its work FC provides a framework for establishing co-ordinated support for the business community. This work includes working with borough Business Link networks to build a long term relationship with 1000 targeted Central London SMEs.
2 Strengthening Workforce Skills/Employability
FC's work in the area of skills and employability training accounts for the bulk (64%) of its expenditure.
3 Strengthening Local Competitiveness
This strand of FC's work is through key regeneration partnerships. Within Islington this is the Kings Cross Development Area where the aim is to work in partnership to
* influence partner responses to skills development
* influence business development strategy
* act as Managing Agent fro training and HRD
* ensure opportunities for local residents to secure
employment
D) DELIVERING THE STRATEGY
FC's 100 staff have expertise in training, business services and local economic development. An essential task in financing significant development in these fields is leveraging funds from the private sector and public funds (especially SRB, DTI City Challenge, and EU structural funds) and enhancing this expertise to bid, and to lobby for external funds for partners. Acting as a bidding resource for partners is a strategic priority.
Key research themes aim to build on partnership players' understanding of the local economy including skills mismatch, the changing needs of employers, economic assessment, social exclusion - especially of refugees, homeless and youth; and key business sectors (especially financial services, business and professional creative industries, tourism, and education).
E) CONSTRAINTS
FC's efforts to make a significant impact on education, training and enterprise is constrained by a number of factors particularly those to do with the fragmentation of economic development initiatives within its own area remit and those of other agencies, and the complex interplay of the cyclical nature of economic activity and local actions as it impacts on economic development generally.
Historically, the bulk of TEC activity has been to act as the Managing Agents for Government Training Schemes (which are currently known as Welfare to Work and New Deal). In other words its work has been heavily driven by government training programme funding.
Its current strategy reflects the debate on achieving an optimal balance between impacting on the competitiveness of local economies and access to education, training and employment of local residents - made especially complex in the light of the fact that in the Focus Central area of London, 70% of the 1.0 million jobs are filled by residents from OUTSIDE the FC region
- which helps explain the high levels of unemployment, deprivation and social exclusion within the 9 boroughs that constitute the Focus Central area.
Its current strategy also reflects a shift towards a stronger partnership model not only in its area regeneration work, but also in the delivery of other strands of its strategy.