Chancellor Alistair Darling’s decision to earmark £2.5 billion in this year’s Budget to boost skills and innovation among small businesses has been branded “vital” in helping the UK to recover from recession.

 
The one-off growth package is intended to encourage employers to invest in developing key skills such as literacy and numeracy among their workforces and to help close the wider UK skills gap.
 
According to the National Employer Skills Survey (NESS) for England published earlier this month, the number of organisations experiencing skills gaps rose to 19% in 2009 compared with 15% two years ago. Such skills gaps were most common among so-called lower level occupations, with 9% of elementary staff and 10% of sales and customer service staff described as lacking in proficiency compared with only 6% of professionals and managers.
 
The NESS survey was undertaken among 79,152 organisations and commissioned by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills during March and July last year.
 
Training company uke learning said in a statement: “The skills of our national workforce have a vital role to play in how well we recover from this recession as well as how well we will thrive in the eventual recovery. It is reassuring that Darling is taking steps to address this by making key skills a fundamental part of the growth package for small business.”
 
While the available skills of the UK workforce were still significantly behind those of other European countries, the situation was “reversible” if employers took greater advantage of government-led opportunities and were prepared to invest in targeted training.
 
“The point of Darling’s investment in business growth now is so that organisations can invest further in their workforces to drive the business forward and help this country back to financial health,” the statement said. “The Chancellor has indicated that there may well be cuts next year and companies need to build development programmes now in order to prepare for this.”