Matthew Ogg, Head of Policy at Society of Motor Manufacturers (SMMT), participated in Transport Committee discussions.
He highlights challenges within the supply chain.
Ogg said: “What we are seeing in automotive at the moment is a really constrained market. This year our forecast is that we will maybe make just short of a million vehicles. The industrial strategy ambition is 1.3 million vehicles by 2035.
“You can imagine the uplift in workforce and skills we will need if we are to achieve those ambitions.”
Ogg questions the “bandwidth and capacity” of SMEs to accommodate staff training.
He said: “They do not pay the Apprenticeships Levy so there is a real opportunity there to support that part of the market with Government support and targeted support for SMEs.
“They really struggle with taking people of production lines for training, so backfilling some of that support. The funding bands, the technology you need to train on for EV and high voltage is much more expensive. It is a lot harder for higher education providers to do that.”
The SMMT calls for flexible use of the Levy funds the industry already accrues.
“I know the plan is for a growth and skills Levy, which we support, but it has not been implemented yet and that will allow us to spend up to 50% on short courses on non-apprenticeship training which could be really well deployed,” said Ogg.
“Another element of that, going back to support for the supply chain and SMEs, how can OEMs who have funds they have not deployed or have a running underspend more easily transfer that down their own supply chains to help those business that struggle to either afford training or have time off the line?
“There is an underspend for a number of businesses in the Levy and that’s already sat there ready to use so if we could find a way to deploy what we already have that would be a really good way forward.”
Ogg later added: “We do not want to see challenges in the supply chain because that leads to the risk of production stoppages at the high level. We have a vested interest in that. An unplanned stoppage in automotive can be a million pounds an hour in cost.”
