Introduction
Mike Spicer [00:02]
Should every major infrastructure project have to show not just what it will build, but who it will employ?
David Marlow [00:09]
Heathrow’s new Infrastructure Skills Council is trying to do just this, but is it the future of local labour market policy, or just a very Heathrow answer to a very Heathrow problem? I’m David Marlow,
Mike Spicer [00:24]
and I’m Mike Spicer. Welcome to LED Confidential, the podcast that tries to lift the lid on those intractable, enduring challenges facing those of us working in and on local economic development and placemaking today.
The Heathrow Infrastructure Skills Council and the shifting timeline
David Marlow [00:37]
Right, Mike. Well, Heathrow launched its Infrastructure Skills Council on the 14th of September with Make UK and the TUC. It’s co-chaired by Lord Blunkett and Robert Halfon, the former Skills Minister who is now at Make UK, and Alan Milburn has endorsed it as the government’s youth employment adviser. The council isn’t a training provider; it’s a convening body. It’s planning evidence sessions around the UK, an invitation to the regional mayors, and a report with recommendations for Heathrow, the wider infrastructure sector and government.
Alongside it, Heathrow says its youth employment and skills plan for expansion could support 5,000 apprenticeships, traineeships and other entry-level opportunities. It also says expansion could support around 108,000 jobs across construction, engineering, logistics and the supply chain. Heathrow’s statutory consultation on the third runway runs from the 27th of October to the 22nd of December, ahead of a Development Consent Order application under the draft Heathrow expansion national policy statement. So, is this all a pitch into the planning process?
And of course, as we both know, the clock has moved even since we planned this episode. On the 28th of September, Heathrow told government that the 2035 opening date set in January 2025 isn’t achievable. It now aims for planning permission by 2029, and a runway open within a decade of that, which means 2039. To put that in context, a young person who is NEET today won’t be as old as either you or I, but will be well into their 30s before any runway opens.
The history is also worth remembering. In September 2014, Heathrow pledged to double apprenticeships across the airport to 10,000 by 2030, and to recruit half of them from the local boroughs. It said expansion could end youth unemployment in Ealing, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Slough and Spelthorne. Those aren’t like-for-like measures, admittedly, but 12 years on, the headline has halved to 5,000 opportunities, of which apprenticeships are only one part.
None of that means we should dismiss it. Infrastructure has many things that many labour market interventions lack: known demand, identifiable occupations, long lead times. Although a four-year slip shows how known demand can quickly move, the real question for me is whether this is about young people and economically inactive adults furthest from work, or about a looming construction workforce shortage, and who, if anyone, can connect those two priorities together. How does that sound to you, Mike?
Why delay matters in skills planning, and lessons from HS2
Mike Spicer [03:46]
I should say, by way of a disclaimer, that I am in fact working on an employment and skills action plan for a major infrastructure project in the UK that shall remain nameless. I will just say that it is one of the more famous ones, and that has given me an insight into how you do labour market and skills planning at scale in relation to an infrastructure project, and just what the challenges are. So, for example, bumping back the planning permission two or three years is not nothing in skills planning. To put that in perspective, that sort of delay, just in planning permission, is equivalent to the entire timeline of the current crop of LSIPs. Three-year periods are really significant within skills action planning.
The second thing is that we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that we’re talking about people, and people are not pawns that can be shoved around a board, like some World War Two plotter. The reality is that there is significant uncertainty around the future of Heathrow, and I don’t think I’m saying anything out of turn when I say that. David, we’ve probably been talking about this, and I mean, we’re different ages, but I think both of us have had this in the background for the entirety of our careers. I think
David Marlow [05:33]
I published an article on it in 2010.
Mike Spicer [05:37]
Right. So Heathrow, major airport expansion, should not be seen as a given. It most definitely is not a given. Anyone with a long memory knows that, but people in the workforce know that too. We saw it with High Speed Two, where the take-up of skills programmes for high speed rail was pitiful. In fact, it actually led to the closure of a major college. So we can’t assume that just because there is a project somewhere on the horizon, a decade from now, and there’s potentially an economic opportunity that surrounds it, and even if you go as far as to build capacity to train, that people will come. You definitely can’t assume that. Also, the timeline of Heathrow coincides with multiple other projects of national scale, so it’s not operating in any kind of vacuum. We’re talking about West London. We’re talking about thousands of people potentially working on a site in the most expensive part of the UK.
So I think there are substantial challenges around skills planning, whatever you call it: a commission, a forum, a research project, call it what you like. These are really significant challenges that are always there in the background with infrastructure projects, and they’re particularly acute for Heathrow, just because there is such a big question mark over the top of it. But more generally, can infrastructure be an anchor for labour market policy? I think it can be, but it has to be part of a broader strategy for the local economy. It can’t really just exist on its own, because there are competing infrastructure projects. There are competing priorities for construction and engineering labour in particular. Civil engineers are in short supply, and so are construction workers. A Heathrow infrastructure commission focused on infrastructure sounds good, but how integrated is it really with broader discussions about labour needs across London, and indeed projects across the UK as a whole? So I don’t know, David. I’m a bit of a sceptic. I think I’m talking myself into some scepticism there. I think it
David Marlow [08:00]
Surprised me.
Is Heathrow the right anchor?
Mike Spicer [08:02]
I think it’s very worthwhile doing skills planning and labour market planning, for sure. But given how much uncertainty there is over Heathrow, I just wonder how far you can go. Put it this way: I don’t think Heathrow should be the project that anchors a national conversation about skills planning in infrastructure. It definitely shouldn’t be that, given its history. That’s…
Reconciling national, regional and LSIP-level planning
David Marlow [08:28]
No, no. I think you’re entirely right on that. There are a couple of things I wanted to come back to you on, and you’ve touched on them. I did look at NISTA, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, and its work on infrastructure skills. Regardless of Heathrow being pushed back, they are saying that we need a plus or minus 700,000 infrastructure-skilled workforce over the next five years, let alone for when Heathrow comes on stream.
I suppose what I was going to come back to you on, because you’re much more experienced in local skills improvement plans than me, is this: what is the place of an LSIP in setting frameworks for national infrastructure skills needs? Because there are some projects, and Heathrow is one, and the big power stations, the energy stuff, are others, which do draw on national labour markets, maybe even international labour markets for some skills, as well as local and regional. How does an LSIP, in your opinion, deal with that, if you took Heathrow as an example, even though it’s a bad example? It is integral to both the London and Thames Valley LSIPs, and so on. How do they deal with these national labour market policies attached to investment? That’s a bit garbled, and I apologise. But before we leave this, how do you reconcile, if you like, national, regional and LSIP-level skills planning?
Closing
Mike Spicer [10:27]
Well, of course, LSIPs already have to deal with that to some extent, because I doubt there’s an LSIP anywhere in England that doesn’t have major infrastructure projects they’re facing into, or major employment sites being built out outside of their area, and of course the colleges they deal with could be straddling more than one LSIP area. So I think LSIPs already have to deal with complexity that is outside their area.
I think the most practical thing that something like NISTA or an equivalent body, or even Skills England, could do is provide workforce forecasts and an assessment of future skills needs for that project. That’s difficult for any individual LSIP to do, because it’s a major and quite specifically technical exercise, and it’s something that is part of the appraisal process and the business case building for any major project. If it could provide some consistency around that, potentially investing in the analytical side of it, so that LSIPs have got a set of numbers they can work with, that is the most practically useful thing that they can do. You can’t really have LSIPs independently of each other trying to gauge those needs. There has to be some kind of shared source of truth around that. So there’s a practical side to that, really. And on the strategic side, it’s very likely that local growth plans will pick up the economic opportunities that fall out of the largest infrastructure projects anyway, so it should be covered to some degree there.
But we could talk about this for a long time, and maybe we should in the future. In the interests of time, I’ll close it off here. So I hope you enjoyed our brief look at infrastructure and employment and skills. We’d like to hear from you. Have you got a major project in your area that you are thinking about and working around, and trying to understand the skills and labour market impacts of? If you have, let us know. Maybe we can pick it up in a future episode. As always, you can interact with LEDC over our website, which is ledconfidential.co.uk. You can access our bonus material there. Send us your suggestions for future episodes. Till the next time.
