The “Delivering Better Skills for Better Places” action plan was launched by the Housing Minister, John Healey, at the Chartered Institute of Housing Conference on 16 June. The HCA (Homes and Communities Agency) Academy has led this work, with participation and support from over 20 different organisations across the sustainable communities sector. These bodies represent professions integral to successful place-making: regeneration, housing, planning, construction, economic development, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, local government, property, surveying, civil engineering and sustainability. The action plan will build on many of the successful projects and national, regional and local initiatives already under way by some of the partner organisations. It aims to ensure alignment between these initiatives and available resources to deliver the objectives of the action plan. Each partner has been working towards similar ambitions and “Delivering Better Skills for Better Places” combines these energies. Such a co-ordinated approach (for example to recruitment and retention across the sector) has been designed to achieve better outcomes.
The main aims of the action plan are to:
Attract new entrants and retain existing people in the core professions.
Develop generic skills in areas like tow carbon, climate change, empowerment, community cohesion, risk sharing, negotiation, process re-modelling, place leadership and partnership working.
Ensure technical and specialist skills like planning, urban design and skills for changing economic markets are updated in line with new processes, standards, legislation and economic conditions.
The HCA Academy has allocated £240,000 in each of the next two years to take forward this programme. This allocation will fund detailed research to give an up-to-date and comprehensive picture of employment flows in and out of the sector, and to measure skills gaps so that future actions can be better planned. Other areas of work that will be covered by this funding include development and delivery of training programmes in generic skills (eg cohesion; addressing the downturn) and opening up career progression and entry routes across the professions. Full details of the action plan are available on the HCA Academy website at
www.hcaacademy.co.uk/betterplaces