Aiming High - Part One Boroughwide Priorities Increasing jobs and prosperity

We want to ensure the future prosperity of Rochdale borough. We will work in partnership to create quality jobs and make sure our people have the skills necessary to do them. We will continue to develop the major projects in progress which will generate employment and business opportunities. We will play a full role in the wider economy of the Manchester City Region, which will bring additional opportunities for our people and businesses.

Our challenge is to ensure that our people benefit directly from investment. This is particularly important given the high numbers of jobless people and deprivation in areas of the borough. Issues which we need to address include:

  • Nearly one in five adults has no educational qualifications
  • Over two thirds of new jobs in the wider economy will require NVQ Level 3 (2 A Levels) or above in the future, but only 36% of residents currently have those skills
  • 14,800 people in the Borough claim unemployment benefits
  • Manufacturing is still very important to the local economy but is forecast to lose 5,000 jobs by 2015
  • The level of new business start-up is very low

We will work with our partners in the Rochdale Borough Economic Partnership to bring about change. We will continue to take a lead in co-ordinating borough-wide activity and developing innovative approaches to increase jobs and prosperity.

Priorities

  • We will raise skills levels of residents, so that they match the needs of employers
  • We will give local people the support and training they need to get jobs
  • We will stimulate an enterprise culture and support growing businesses
  • We will develop major employment sites, in particular Kingsway Business Park which is of regional significance

What we will do

We will:

  • Lead on revising the Economic Development Strategy to take account of the changing economic context
  • Continue to co-ordinate skills training provision. We will promote workforce skills development and work with schools to make sure teachers and young people are aware of opportunities. We will ensure training meets the needs of existing and new employers
  • Narrow the skills gap between disadvantaged groups and neighbourhoods and the rest of the Borough. To do this we will ensure a wide range of employment and training schemes are targeted at these groups. We will enable people who are most at risk of exclusion from opportunities to access training and education
  • Develop learning opportunities in libraries across the Borough
  • Help local people get jobs. We will do this by working with new investors, and by introducing a Talent Pool initiative within the Council. We will continue to work with partners to help employers find staff, by providing outreach and employer liaison services
  • Work together with partners to help incapacity benefit claimants improve health and job prospects
  • Develop a Borough Enterprise Strategy and continue to support entrepreneurs – especially women, ethnic minorities and people with new business ideas
  • Promote our Buy Local, Spend Local initiative. We will also encourage improvements in local public and private sector procurement opportunities
  • Develop new strategies with our partners on infrastructure and investment, tourism and marketing the Borough
  • Co-ordinate the building of high quality homes to retain and attract skilled people
  • Build a new post-16 education centre for the Borough
  • Ensure the Kingsway Team helps many local people to get jobs on Kingsway
  • Reduce the gap on worklessness rates between our most deprived neighbourhoods, the rest of the Borough and the national average
  • Work with our partners to provide housing related support to a wide range of vulnerable groups based on assessment of need
  • Support vulnerable people to access training, education and employment opportunities