Regions face a downhill march in bootcamp funding

Funding for devolved areas to run skills bootcamps has been cut by more than half this financial year, data suggests.

Allocations for the 41 areas responsible for commissioning the short courses – including the Greater London Authority, mayoral combined authorities and some local authorities – fell by 55 per cent in April, from £251 million to £112 million.

While the Department for Work and Pensions privately informed most areas of their 2026-27 allocations in January, it only published the figures in full last week.

Some areas have been hit particularly hard. Cheshire and Warrington’s allocation plunged by 81 per cent, down £8.6 million to £2 million, while Hull and East Yorkshire’s dropped 80 per cent, down by £9.1 million to £2.3 million.

The Greater London Authority and North East Combined Authority also saw reductions of more than 60 per cent.

The cuts have been met with disappointment from local authorities and business groups, with warnings that scaling back the short, employer-led courses risks slowing productivity.

Bootcamp model

April marked the start of the seventh year of skills bootcamps, which offer adults publicly funded courses of up to 16 weeks to help them upskill, progress in work and move into priority sectors such as digital, construction and engineering. The courses are supposed to include a guaranteed job interview.

In 2023-24, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, skills bootcamps recorded their largest cohort to date, with 71 per cent of 60,000 learners completing their course.

Questions remain about how effectively the programme delivers employment outcomes.

Providers only received positive outcome payments – worth around 30 per cent of funding per learner – for 47 per cent of learners in 2023-24, up from 37 per cent the previous financial year.

Most funding is distributed to local areas through grants, while a smaller portion is managed through national DWP contracts for construction-related skills bootcamps delivered directly by training providers.

Local budgets slashed

Almost every one of the 41 areas receiving skills bootcamp grants this year has had its allocation reduced.

Suffolk and Norfolk, which faces a 70 per cent reduction to £1.5 million, estimates that around 1,000 fewer learners will have access to the courses this financial year.

A Suffolk and Norfolk Combined County Authority spokesperson said: “Skills bootcamps have delivered strong results for the region – helping residents upskill quickly, supporting employers in meeting critical skills shortages, and offering excellent value for money compared to other national employability programmes – so the reduction in funding was disappointing.”

Business body Enterprising Cumbria, whose local authority Cumberland Council has seen its allocation halved to £1.5 million, said the courses are a “critical part” of the region’s skills pipeline and have helped nearly 3,000 people into employment.

A spokesperson told FE Week: “At a time when economic growth is a national priority, scaling back a proven programme risks slowing productivity and holding back Cumbria’s contribution to that growth.”

Methodology switch-up

The cuts follow the introduction of a new “budget-led” DWP funding methodology, which allocates money based on historic delivery rather than setting grants according to maximum potential uptake.

It argues that overall skills bootcamp funding has increased despite the reduction in local allocations because budgets are now calculated on expected spend rather than maximum allocations.

A DWP spokesperson said: “We are committed to supporting the continued delivery of skills bootcamps, which have achieved over 50,000 positive employment outcomes since 2020.

“We are increasing investment in skills bootcamps in the 2026-27 financial year, including the local delivery budget, while also implementing a new budget-led allocation model for local areas to ensure the distribution of funding remains fit for purpose as the programme matures.”

The department’s spokesperson added that the programme’s payment-by-results model means local areas have historically spent only “50-60 per cent” of their maximum allocations, making the previous approach unsustainable for the government to manage.

However, annual national spending figures seen by FE Week suggest 78 per cent of the available budget was spent in 2023-24, rising to 97 per cent in 2024-25.

The DWP’s “overall budget” for skills bootcamps – an unpublished figure based on expected spend – increased from £146 million in 2025-26 to £166 million this year, according to the department.

Officials refused to explain how those figures were calculated, claiming that further budget information would be published in due course.

Increased flexibility

This year, the government removed skills bootcamp funding ringfences for mayoral combined authorities with established devolution agreements.

These include some of the areas facing the largest cuts, such as the Greater London Authority, where the allocation fell by £18 million, or 61 per cent, to £12 million, and the North East Combined Authority, which dropped by £18 million, or 64 per cent, to £10 million.

However, the government has also introduced a ringfence for non-devolved local authorities, reserving around a third of allocations for construction-focused courses.

Increased freedoms given to devolved mayors means some areas, including West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, are ditching the skills bootcamp model in favour of other forms of training.