‘We must ensure local people have the skills to seize those opportunities.’ That was the message from Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen and North East Chamber of Commerce assistant director Rachel Anderson as the Department for Education published 39 Local Skills Improvement Plans across England on Friday 10 July. For Tees Valley, the point is plain enough. If clean energy, advanced manufacturing, digital and life sciences jobs are being built here, people in Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool should not be left watching from the sidelines while employers look elsewhere for staff. The new three-year plans are meant to tie training far more closely to what firms actually need.

This is the second round of LSIPs, following the first set published in 2023. Under Skills England guidance issued in November 2025, Strategic Authorities and designated Employer Representative Bodies have been asked to draw the plans up together, then agree actions with colleges, universities, independent training providers and Jobcentres. It sounds technical, but the politics of it matter. Regions outside London have long argued that skills policy is too often designed from the centre and delivered in a one-size-fits-all way. LSIPs are meant to answer that by letting places spell out where the vacancies are, where the training gaps sit and what needs sorting first.

In Tees Valley, the North East Chamber of Commerce plan backs shared work placement programmes for small and medium-sized firms. That may sound modest, yet it speaks to a real problem for many northern employers. Smaller businesses often want to bring young people in, but do not always have the staff time or spare capacity to run placements on their own. Houchen and Anderson said the region is already ‘leading the way’ in sectors expected to shape the UK’s future, and argued the education system has to keep pace with the jobs being created. If the shared model works, it could help engineering, manufacturing and supply-chain firms open routes into work that might otherwise be out of reach.

Elsewhere, the plans show just how uneven local labour markets have become. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough says adverts asking for AI skills rose by around 66 per cent between 2021 and 2025, while mechanical engineering, construction trades and care remain among its hardest roles to fill. Greater Essex wants to train 100 mentors for young people not in education, employment or training. The East Midlands is planning a construction further education teacher industry exchange scheme. In the West of England and North Somerset, leaders say people need much clearer information about green jobs and the routes into them, with a wider growth strategy built around 72,000 new jobs over the coming decade. Different places, different pressures, but the same argument runs through the lot: training works best when it is rooted in the real economy.

Skills England chair Phil Smith described the plans as a ‘clear roadmap’ to better skills and better jobs. Skills minister Jacqui Smith said local leaders have the best view of what their areas need and pointed to the wider package, including the Growth and Skills Levy and the Youth Guarantee, as part of the answer for people who have been shut out of opportunity. That is the line from Westminster. On the ground, the test will be simpler. Do young people see more apprenticeships and better advice? Do employers stop saying they cannot recruit? And do colleges get enough backing to reshape courses quickly enough to match what local firms are asking for?

The government release says collaboration is hard-wired into this round, with actions agreed rather than merely wished for. That matters. Too many skills plans in the past have read well on launch day and then drifted once the meetings thin out and budgets tighten. LSIPs are also tied to a wider national aim for two-thirds of young people to take part in higher-level learning by the age of 25, whether that is academic study, technical training or an apprenticeship. For northern communities, that target only means something if it creates clear routes from classroom to payslip, not another stack of glossy paperwork.

There is a reason this matters well beyond Whitehall. Labour shortages do not show up as an abstract policy row in places like Teesside; they show up on factory floors, on building sites and in care settings where vacancies stretch teams to the limit. So these new plans deserve proper attention, especially where they give more say to local employers and regional authorities. But the verdict will not come from ministers or chambers of commerce. It will come from whether more local people can train locally, stay locally and step into decent work when the jobs appear.