Developing a Skills Strategy for the UK Life Sciences Sector

Steer Economic Development has been commissioned to act as a critical friend to the Science Industry Partnership (SIP), to support and guide the development of a Skills Strategy for the UK Life Sciences Sector.  This is a high-profile project, part of the second UK Life Sciences Sector Deal, which responds to recommendations made in the UK Life Sciences Industrial Strategy. The Skills Strategy will look forward to 2030, identifying the world-class skills, talents and training that the UK sector needs to keep pace with technology and market change and compete on a global scale.

The 2030 Skills Strategy will be led by the SIP Futures Group consisting of a range of life sciences companies and key trade associations the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and the BioIndustry Association (BIA) who are both co-funding the work.

SIP Board member, Chair of the SIP  Futures and Managing Director of Eisai manufacturing Ltd, Alex Felthouse said: “The UK Life Sciences sector continues to make advances in science and technology which improve all our lives, making new discoveries that deliver treatments once unimaginable. It has an ongoing need to recruit, train and develop employees and its demand for higher-level skills continues to intensify. This important Strategy will ensure we focus our efforts on emerging and growing skills shortages, providing us with clear priority areas that we can target with both action and solutions, in partnership with Government."

Across 2019, our team will:

• Work with the SIP Futures Group to guide the development of the strategy and policy recommendations;
• Co-develop assumptions on factors affecting the demand for and supply of Life Sciences skills, and the sector’s occupational mix, in particular, the impact of technology, to inform the development of projections/forecasts of skills demand to 2030;
• Provide guidance to the SIP research team in the execution of further quantitative and qualitative research work to develop the evidence base that will underpin the strategy;
• Write a final Skills Strategy report for publication, drawing on outputs produced by the SIP team.