What are Skills Bootcamps?

by Joe Sanders

Skills Bootcamps are part of the Government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee, helping everyone gain skills for life. They offer bespoke training solutions to bridge existing skills gaps within high demand sectors. Funded through the Department of Education and forming part of the National Skills Fund Skills Bootcamps place the employer at the Centre of training and development.

Skills Bootcamps are flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, giving people the opportunity to build up sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer if they are unemployed.

Skills Bootcamps in Cumbria

Cumbria LEP has identified unique projects to support organisations, sector representative groups, employers and/or delivery partners in Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area to address skills shortages. The projects will deliver flexible training programmes for adults (19+), delivered by a range of quality assured training providers.

Skills Bootcamps are free (to the learner), flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, giving people the opportunity to build up sector-specific skills and fast-track to an interview with a local employer.

Employer cost

There is no cost to employers in recruiting individuals who have completed a Skills Bootcamp.

Employers contribute to the cost of training if they want to use Skills Bootcamps to train their existing employees:

  • small or medium employers (SMEs up to 250 employees) contribute 10%
  • large employers (over 250+ employees) contribute 30% of the cost

Existing employees will need time to attend classes and it is likely that they will also require additional study time dependent upon the Skills Bootcamp.

If you are an employer you can support your employees to upskill or retrain through Skills Bootcamps to help them progress in your organisation or recruit new employees who have completed Skills Bootcamps.

These may be through Skills Bootcamps currently offered or if you cannot find one to suit your specific training needs we can look to co-design a bespoke Skills Bootcamps in order to fill your skills shortages.

To be eligible for a Cumbria Skills Bootcamp, you must:

  • Have the right to work in the UK;
  • Be over 19 years old on the 31st August 2023;
  • Live in Cumbria, or be working in Cumbria

For more information contact Skills Fix: info@skillsfix.co.uk

 

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