Employment Skills Plans and Procurement
To provide Members with an update on work undertaken by Wokingham Borough Council. (Presentation by Rhian Hayes, Wokingham Borough Council)
Minutes:
The Committee received a report from Rhian Hayes on the work undertaken by Wokingham Borough Council.
The main points made were that:
· Developers were required to commit to a certain number of apprenticeships and opportunities for young people but this needed to extend to sub-contractors.
· There was huge growth coming in Wokingham.
· Plans were negotiated at the time of the planning permission.
· The requirement to offer apprenticeships and opportunities for young people was included amongst the criteria for scoring tenders.
· The level of requirement was based on size of the project having regard to Construction Industry Trading Board figures.
· Developers were very keen to get involved but there was a lot of work to do to ensure it was embedded in policies.
· It was very resource intensive as a great deal of monitoring was required but useful for building contacts.
The Committee also noted that Wokingham was working closely with Reading and the LEP.