Less than a hundred miles away, in Bradford, SkillsHouse<\/a> \u2013 part of the council\u2019s employment and skills service \u2013 is working with schools<\/a>, colleges and local employers to support students from early years through to post-16 employment. Through facilitating partnerships between local schools and employers, SkillsHouse helps not just young students to understand the opportunities in their local economy, but also enables educators to feed the necessary career skills into their curriculum and businesses to build a local talent pipeline.\u00a0<\/p>\n These outstanding initiatives show that it is possible to transform prospects for young people, whilst allowing them to stay in their hometowns, where their families and communities are.\u00a0<\/p>\n What\u2019s the crucial ingredient in these examples? They bring local businesses, educators, and other local partners together, so everyone benefits from the combined knowledge and capacity, reducing the burden on individual SMEs.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n By sharing data on local skills and employment, advocating around shared local needs and partnering on local skills outreach programmes, they set up their own economies of coordination<\/a>, and unlock the benefits larger organisations might see from economies of scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Stronger local networks can lift the burden from strained local businesses\u00a0<\/p>\n These pockets of promise show that more can be done to improve apprenticeship routes and other access to work for young people in disadvantaged areas. But they only happen when employers, colleges, councils and community organisations are given the tools to work together.\u00a0<\/p>\n The responsibility is now on the government to build these links. That means the government nurturing strong, long-term partnerships between regional institutions and local firms and educators. It means local authorities building \u2018community hubs<\/a>\u2019, connecting businesses with community organisations to align on local priorities and embed them into council services. And it means considering the launch of local online resources like \u2018social value portals\u2019, so companies can understand and measure their impact on local jobs and opportunities.<\/p>\n Delivered at national scale, this approach could be transformative. According to analysis by Demos, it could deliver up to two million new apprenticeships across the country and unlock up to \u00a328bn each year in economic growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the change means far more than just good statistics. It would offer a more hopeful future for a generation of young people, and breathe new life back into left-behind towns and neighbourhoods across Britain. That\u2019s exactly what the country needs.<\/p>\n Nicola Stokes is a researcher at the cross party think tank Demos<\/a>.<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Change a vendor\u2019s life.<\/p>\n Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week \u2013 and always take the magazine. It\u2019s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.<\/p>\n You can also support online:\u00a0Subscribe to the magazine<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0support our work<\/a>\u00a0with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SMEs can play a key role in unlocking sorely-needed jobs Key to providing local highly-paid jobs for young…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8581,13,16018,16019,16020,18,613,4126],"class_list":{"0":"post-34453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-apprenticeships","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-environment-and-community","11":"tag-health-and-wellbeing","12":"tag-levelling-up","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-opinion","15":"tag-young-people"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116561058639789600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776060517_614_35-birthday-subs_FINAL_v3_800x250.jpg\")
<\/p>\n