Wakefield is an ancient cathedral city, with fantastic countryside within easy reach. It sits at the heart of a well-connected road and rail system. Its schools are successful. But in many respects, Wakefield is not thriving.
Its economy underperforms. There are too few highly skilled jobs. Despite some amazing companies, there is not enough innovation in the economy. And far too few adults have the higher-level skills which equip them for the economy of the future. The Wakefield Futures Commission was set up by Wakefield Council and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to address the gap between Wakefield’s current economy and what it needs to succeed better for its citizens.
The commission did something rarely done in struggling cities or towns. We asked: what would it take to really shift a local economy from a low-skills base to a high-skills base, from low pay to higher pay, to make it future-ready? So often this is seen as either a supply problem – there aren’t enough highly-skilled people – or a demand problem, that there are not enough highly skilled jobs.
A town where the economy generates few higher-skill jobs will always struggle to persuade adults to invest time and money in gaining higher-level qualifications. Equally, an economy that creates such jobs but cannot supply the right skilled people to fill them will see opportunities fly by. Success depends on growing the supply and demand sides together, thinking about how they interact in specific ways.
Wakefield illustrates this challenge vividly. The district has created jobs quickly since 2019, but too many are lower paid. Productivity per worker is £12,000 lower than the national average. Only 8.2 per cent of jobs are in knowledge-based industries. To match the regional average, Wakefield would need 12,000 more knowledge-based jobs.
Although Wakefield’s young people achieve strong academic results, only a third of older residents hold higher-level qualifications, compared with nearly half nationally. Our commission found explanations for these gaps. With relatively few high-skilled jobs, there are few incentives for employers to invest in training or for adults to participate. And the cost and accessibility of training makes things harder. The result is a cycle of lower skills and insufficient training.
But this can be fixed if we think about growing supply and demand together, raising demand for skills and better jobs in the economy alongside the supply of the skills those jobs need. We propose a new organisation to build supply and demand together, the Wakefield Futures Centre.
This centre will work with employers, university researchers and training providers, including Wakefield College. There’s already a range of higher-level training provision in Wakefield, including at Wakefield College and at the Academy of Live Technology, but too often the provision is not matched to future skills needs, or not accessible to enough people.
The Wakefield Futures Centre won’t be a new training institution competing for students, but a backbone organisation to make the system work better. It will help match demand and supply – convening employers and training providers to ensure skills are aligned to local jobs. It will promote short, stackable courses that can be flexible to help adults access them. It will collect and share data on what works. Above all, it will drive collaboration so that universities, colleges, businesses and the council work together.
Its focus will be on sectors where Wakefield can realistically grow high-skill jobs: advanced manufacturing, the creative industries, advanced logistics and the green economy. There are already local strengths here, from the Academy of Live Technology to clusters of advanced manufacturing companies, that are essential for economic growth.
We are also calling for achievable national reforms to free up the skills market: bursaries for adults taking short higher-level courses, local powers to commission higher-level award-bearing provision tailored to business need, and reforms to the apprenticeship levy so smaller firms can access modular training.
Finally, we recommend an annual ‘report card’ to track progress not just in qualifications gained, but in the outcomes that matter – wages, productivity, and job creation. If we are serious about transforming the skills system, we must be serious about measuring the results.
Wakefield’s challenges and opportunities are, of course, its own. With sustained leadership, the Futures Centre and shifts in national policy, Wakefield can not only move decisively from being a low- to high-skilled district, but can provide a model for other towns to follow.
With the right design and determination, even long-standing cycles of low skills and low pay can be broken.
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