The availability of suitably skilled labour is causing real concern to our local businesses. Week after week, I visit firms across the patch who tell me that order books are full, new business is being won and that they’re keen to expand their operation. Yet the barrier to that expansion is not connectivity, business rates or even the availability of larger premises but the lack of people with the right skills seeking work in our local area.
Partly this is because unemployment is still very low and there are more people in work across our region than ever before. However, some high profile closures and redundancy programmes over the last year or so have seen our local unemployment numbers tick up a little and yet businesses still say that they can’t find the right staff.
On the industrial estates and business parks across the Wells Constituency there are small and medium size businesses who are crying out for people with engineering skills. A little further down the road, we’ve embarked on the largest civil engineering project in Europe with a huge appetite for skilled builders, metalworkers and countless more trades besides. There is a jobs boom in Somerset and yet we don’t seem ready to take advantage.
I’m encouraging those employers – both big and small – to do more to advertise those vacancies and I’ll encourage our colleges to do more to make re-skilling and upskilling more accessible to those who might want to take advantage of the well paid jobs that are now on offer here. However, we also have to accept that if our local economy is growing as well as it is, we need to encourage more people to come and live here too. Our local businesses are ready to grow, our community needs to be ready to support them.