Preferred Apprenticeships Partner to SSDC

• Current Situation – SSDC is the local district council for South Somerset and employs around 400 people across several specialisms including town planning, housing, council tax collection, elections, strategic planning, food safety, economic development – and many more – together with the associated customer service, administration and internal support services required to support the smooth running of a dynamic, forward thinking, modern organisation.

• Our People Strategy emphasises the importance of a personalised, blended and continuous learning and development offer for all employees. We aim to do this by supporting all employees to take personal responsibility for learning and development. We also recognise that addressing skills gaps, to meet the future demands of our customers and communities, requires constant investment in the development of our people.

• Objectives: Our objective is to ensure that our workforce has access to the learning and development needed to meet work related and personal / career development goals. Specifically, we want to make full use of the employer levy for apprenticeships, matching our future requirements for skills and knowledge to individual learning plans.

• Likely Contract Period 2020 – 2023

• Indicative Budget – Our current annual levy paid into our digital account is around £44k per annum, with an accrued amount as at Sept 19 of £94k, accrued over the last 24 months. Payment to the preferred partner will be via the levy for the provision of approved courses. (Please note that is it highly unlikely a single learning provider would be able to offer the full range of apprenticeships we may require hence our intention to select a partner with a broad range to maximise the opportunity for the partner).