Menu
On stage at the Lancashire Business View magazine launch in Chorley, host Richard Slater welcomed guest Linda Dean, Managing Director of the Lancashire and Cumbria Institute of Technology.
The Lancashire and Cumbria Institute of Technology is fundamentally about bringing together the brilliant colleges that we’ve got in Lancashire, with our really strong universities in Lancashire and amazing businesses to say, ‘what are the skills that we need for growth and productivity?’
It’s then how our universities and our colleges come together so we can do something faster, better, more sophisticated and get that to market to make a difference to businesses and our students.
We’re one of 21 IoTs in the UK that the previous government funded, and we got part of a £300 million investment. What we chose to do in Lancashire was to spend that on equipment that the business community told us was needed, or equipment that we found through research would be needed in the future.
We’re enabling businesses to access equipment they may not yet have. We’ve got some good examples of where that’s working.
I think, sharing some of the stories of where it’s making a difference in sectors such as health, science, digital, engineering, construction and automotive.
We’re not just working with large employers, we’re also particularly interested in SMEs. We have skills advisory groups with spaces still available for businesses.
If there’s anybody that would be interested in taking part in skills advisory groups, directly informing the board, please get in touch with us.
Just to give you an example of how we’re working with businesses, Burnley College, one of our partners, is working with employers who are looking at integrating fully automated production and to support this the college have invested in Industry 4.0 automation systems that simulate production lines and replicate the process within in businesses so these employers can do training and testing in a safe space.
Yes, and its facilities that businesses may not have.
We’ve invested in Igloos – a 360-degree virtual environment and we have businesses coming in to test crowd control.
We’ve invested in high quality engineering, robotic equipment, cobots and anatomage tables from a health perspective.
With live projects, students get experience and businesses get to see that skilled workforce of the future.
Over in this area of Lancashire, we’re working with Leyland Trucks who wanted specific EV modules that didn’t exist before. Working with Preston College they’ve pulled together training courses that meet a very specific need for that workforce. But it’s all about growth and productivity.
We are very much about what’s going to help you to drive growth and productivity, really aligned with your industrial strategy and then bring together the colleges and the universities to have a conversation on your behalf.
We want it to be as simple to access as possible for businesses.
Only 35% of our residents have a level four qualification or above. Nationally, that’s 44% – so there’s a gap and that really makes a difference in terms of growth, productivity and innovation. That’s our particular focus in the IoT.
If you are interested in joining one of our advisory boards, we still have spaces. You have the chance to influence the curriculum and the education for your benefit.
You’d be talking to all our colleges and all our universities. We’re looking for an hour every eight weeks and we run the meetings on Teams, so it’s not a massive ask.
Please share the message. If you’re in a conversation with others who say they have a skills gap here, we can’t run our business, we’re lacking productivity, think of us. We can bring together our colleges and our universities in Lancashire to get a solution for you.
To find our more visit www.landciot.ac.uk or email employer@landciot.ac.uk to become an employer partner.