New jobs, skills & business portal for Glos goes live

Published by

Nicky Godding

A new Skills Portal, making it easier for those looking for a new job, to learn new skills or set up their own business has been launched.

The Skills Portal, developed by GFirst LEP and Gloucestershire County Council, brings together, and simplifies, all available national and local skills support.

The portal is specifically designed to help those who may have recently become unemployed, those who have been made redundant, individuals looking to learn new skills, 16 to 24 year olds looking for support and individuals looking to set up a new business.

Pete Carr, Director of Employment & Skills at GFirst LEP, said: “I was angry at being forced to leave a job and a company I liked. I felt anxious about paying the mortgage and bills. My self-confidence had taken a knock and, even though I knew deep down that I’d be OK, the short-term challenges of boosting my confidence, my skills and job hunting felt daunting.

“These were some of the emotions and thoughts I had on being made redundant from a previous job. From talking to others in this position recently, I know many other people are facing uncertainty through furlough, with decreasing sales and diminishing business opportunities resulting from the Covid pandemic. This, plus questions from Gloucestershire businesses and residents about how to get help to find a new job or to retrain led GFirst LEP, with funding from Gloucestershire County Council, to set up the Gloucestershire Skills Portal.”

“The Skills Portal has been developed as a resource for anyone facing redundancy, looking to retrain or for work, or seeking apprenticeship, learning and training opportunities. It’s also there to help local businesses who need to know what support they can bring in to help their staff. The idea is to have all this information easily available in one place. There’s lots of great support available out there, both locally and nationally, but previously, a lot of people didn’t know where to look - now they do! We are very grateful to Gloucestershire County Council for funding the development of the portal and enabling us to keep it up-to-date. We will also be working with local training providers and partner organisations such as Adviza and Job Centre Plus, to develop more tailor-made support packages so watch out for these coming soon.”

Cllr Patrick Molyneux, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Skills at Gloucestershire County Council said: “It is so important that we do all we can to support businesses and individuals to thrive; We’ll continue to focus on doing all we can to support them in this, including making it as easy as possible to spot opportunities and offers of support, via this new portal.”

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.