''Skills Emergency" Alert
Published: 13 May, 2025
A prominent expert in Engineering and Manufacturing skills has called for business to urgently overhaul UK skills provision to ensure there’s an adequate number of domestic professionals to sustain industrial operations.
The impending skills ‘emergency’ may mean that UK industry fails to meet current demand and fail to generate the growth and productivity that government yearns.
Responding to Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement that skilled migration was going to be curbed for those that don’t have a degree, Ann Watson, CEO of Enginuity (pictured), formerly known as sector skills council Semta, said, that a sudden reduction in visas for workers needed desperately by UK industry could prove disastrous if business does not react immediately.
“A massive uplift in UK skills training is now an urgent necessity, not just a laudable ambition.” Said Watson. “This is fast becoming an emergency rather than just an acute problem.
“Industry is at a pivotal moment, if it is to maintain output, let alone grow as the Government is rightly fixated upon.”
Enginuity, known as the ‘sector connector’ will act as a catalyst between thousands of small and medium sized businesses and government, to determine next steps.
“It seems that business will be expected to roll-up its sleeves and make radical changes to skill people themselves. We will help them introduce best practice to their training regimes, and gear up throughput to try and ensure that this happens as quickly as possible.
“Much of our sector is already being strangled by a lack of skills in the pipeline and this might just finish them off. Many of the disciplines that are in most demand don’t need a degree level entrant – hence they won’t qualify for a visa.
"Even if we had people queuing up to enter vocational pathways to work, which often isn't the case, it would take years to get them to the sufficient level to hold their own in the workplace.
“Government is examining the possibility of reducing the duration and quality of apprenticeships, but it’s not the answer to a long-term problem. We need to create our own sustainable, proficient, skilled workforce, before we cut off the current supply.
“Hundreds of thousands of skilled workers are due to retire in the next five years which will only exacerbate the situation."
In Scotland alone, more than a million additional workers will be required in the next 10 years.
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