During the Spending Review and Autumn Budget in October 2021, the Chancellor announced that Lincolnshire had been awarded £19.5m from The Levelling Up Fund towards A16 Corridor Improvements to address the major connectivity and congestion challenges impacting the southeast of the county.

Lincolnshire's bid focusses on increasing opportunity through the creation of more and better employment opportunities within the Agri-food sector in the economic geography surrounding the A16 corridor located within identified areas of Boston and South Holland, at the heart of the UK Food Valley.

Here we highlight some of the projects within this scheme with a strong employment and skills focus:

Care working practices and barriers for recruitment and retention in Boston and the East of Lincolnshire. This feasibility study is built to identify the barriers and opportunities to recruit and retain talent in the care sector and aspires to develop the sector into a career of choice. By engaging with care businesses, the project will help shape and develop alternatives to traditional recruitment methods and review the skill requirements to inform future skills learning and development pathways to qualified or essential training status levels.

Working and Connecting Communities is a project which centres on Lincoln aiming to engage 1,500 hard to reach citizens in job searching through a range of supported activities linked to longer term employment and training opportunities in the construction, hospitality, retail, horticulture sectors, including the development of social enterprises in construction and bakery.

Meanwhile, North-East Lincolnshire is running 5 employment projects totalling and additional £1.295m to include the recently launched UK Food Valley Seafood Sector Pilot.

On 13th January the Grimsby seafood cluster launched a new six month £430,000 UK Food Valley Seafood Pilot programme to help upskill the fish processing workforce in Europe’s largest seafood cluster, supported by the National Centre of Food Manufacturing (NCFM). This programme is part of the government’s Community Renewal Fund (CRF) and was a priority project supported by North-East Lincolnshire Council and the LEP.

The seafood sector and NCFM will use this pilot to shape a new centre for food processing education, research and innovation in Grimsby, with plans to bring forward formal proposals in the first half of 2022. The aim is to ensure that the food processing cluster, centred on the seafood industry but also including expertise in other foods and food logistics and cold storage, has the expertise needed to drive forward growth.

Other projects include CPO / Catzero, Inclusion Into Employment to recruit 100 unemployed participants through a bespoke programme of activities addressing their needs on the journey to training and employment; Keeping the wheels moving with Training in the Logistics sector, led by MODAL Training recognising significant opportunities arising from increased developments in the ports and logistics sector in the area; Think Employment, Reignite supporting participants who have found themselves unemployed due to the pandemic and; Smarter Energy, developing and testing the feasibility of innovative approaches to SME engagement and energy reduction.

North Lincolnshire was awarded £1.318m to deliver four projects. Aspire to Progress is an employer engagement designed to identify training needs with flexible provision delivery to overcome barriers and improve engagement; Building Prosperous Communities, Employability and Skills Support Programme will identify gaps in available skills and provision through an Employer Taskforce, alongside targeted campaigns; Crosby Transformation will develop existing services by building life skills for the homeless, provide business support, trial and pilot business ideas, build confidence towards increasing British Citizenship uptake and provide English language classes for speakers of other languages; and Reconnect is designed to re-engage communities with pre-COVID plans and ambitions to improve resilience, tackle digital and social isolation, and overcome barriers to positive mental and physical health issues. 

Finally, eight Lincoln charities recently celebrated after receiving £701,427 from the Government Community Renewal Fund (CRF) to deliver locally-led, innovative projects that will help breathe new life into the City of Lincoln. Abbey Access Training, Developmentplus, Green Synergy, Lincoln City Foundation, LEAP Housing, YMCA Lincolnshire, have come together to utilise their local insight and knowledge to pilot projects that will impact on local growth, strategic priorities and community renewal. These pilot projects will springboard future activities for the forthcoming UK Shared Prosperity fund.

Community Project Mentors will be actively knocking on doors to inform local residents of the extensive offer of support and signposting to support, community activities and groups, short courses, six month skills training programmes, traineeship programmes, ESOL classes and much more!