England

There are 173,300 hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism establishments across England.

The English sector employs a workforce of 1,572,800 - 83% of the total UK sector workforce - and 79 per cent of businesses employ fewer than ten people

The sector has a significant presence across all nine English regions, but is particularly important in employment terms in the South West, North West and North East. The sector contributes proportionally more to the economies of South West, London and the West Midlands than other English regions.

National Skills Strategy for England

On the back of large scale research People 1st undertook in 2006, a National Skills Strategy was developed to tackle the skills and labour market priorities across the sector. The strategy centres on a ten point plan which addresses four priorities:

• Management and leadership
• Customer service
• Chef skills
• Retention

The strategy sets out how these issues can be tackled through partnership between sector employers and government. Its progress is overseen by a monitoring and implementation group, chaired by the Tourism Minister and made up of employers and government partners.

The strategy document can be downloaded from the ‘key documents' menu on the right hand side of this page, along with the action plan and a specific skills strategy for London.

Review of Qualifications

A critical part of the strategy is ensuring that the qualifications made available to the sector meet the needs of employers. Throughout 2007, People 1st consulted employers and partners to understand those needs and have set out an ambitious strategy and roll out programme for qualification develop in England that aims to:

• rationale existing provision
• ensure qualifications are reinforcing coherent development pathways
• provide bite-sized, flexible delivery

The Sector Qualification Strategy for England and its Action Plan can be found under the ‘Qualification Reform' section of the website.

National Skills Academy

Another element of the strategy is ensuring excellence in training delivery. As part of this, People successfully coordinated a bid for a National Skills Academy in Hospitality.

The Academy aims to highlight and raise the quality of provision across England. In addition, government has established the Quality Training Standard to help employers identify quality provision, and, People1st has worked with the Quality Improvement Agency to produce guidance.

More information is available under the National Skills Academy for Hospitality section of the website.