AQW 8815/17-22

Ms Kellie Armstrong
Alliance Party
Strangford

Tabled Date: 15/10/2020
Answered On Date: 27/10/2020
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for the Economy whether she will review her Department’s business skills and training criteria to ensure small and medium sized enterprises and self-employed enterprises with under 10 employees can access all courses, including digital skill set development.

Answer:

My Department and associated Arm’s Length Bodies provide a wide range of programmes specifically tailored to meet the needs of small and medium sized enterprises, including enterprises with fewer than ten employees. A summary of these schemes is set out in the table below.

Programme	Description
Skills Focus	Upskilling for employees, including those who are furloughed. Available to SMEs, (fewer than 250 employees) and now fully funded by the Department. The programme has an annual budget of £1.5m.
Innovate Us	Fully funded programme offering free training to small businesses, including Social Enterprises, with fewer than 50 employees, delivering up to 60 hours of bespoke training and skills development support per project. The programme has an annual budget of £1.7m.
Assured Skills	Is a short, demand-led, pre-employment training programme, which is fully funded by the Department, to upskill individuals and help them compete for guaranteed job vacancies in new Foreign Direct Investment companies and expanding businesses. The programme has an annual budget of £2.3m
Bridge to Employment	Open to business of all sizes looking to expand. It provides customised training to participants, in particular long term unemployed people, with the skills necessary to compete for new employment opportunities on an equal basis with others. The programme has an annual budget of £280K.
ApprenticeshipNI and Higher level Apprenticeships (HLA’S)	DfE funds the cost of off-the-job training for apprentices aged 16-24 on the ApprenticeshipsNI programme as well as 50% for off-the-job training for apprentices aged 25 years and over in the priority economic areas. HLA’s are open to participants of all ages, without restriction. The Department spends approximately £26m per annum on its Apprenticeship programmes.
Covid-19 Skills Interventions	To assist those employees who had been furloughed, made redundant, or in receipt of support for the self-employed, to develop skills and qualifications, in order to gain, sustain or progress in employment. To date over £6m has been invested in these programmes.
Invest Northern Ireland Skills Interventions	Typically take the form of a grant that can be used to access relevant training and/or upskilling. Over the last three years Invest NI has made 640 separate skills offers, of which 525 (82%) were made to SMEs. The grant value of the offers to those SMEs was £15.41m.