The Leicester & Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership will be hosting a call launch for £4.8m under the European Social Fund Open Call 2014-20.
New European Social Fund Open Calls for Leicester and Leicestershire were released on 16 September 2019, and will close on 9 December 2019. The calls will be focused on Digital Skills, Sector Specific Skills for Productivity and the Employment Hub, and will have an allocation of £4.8 million of LLEP ESF funding under Investment Priorities 2.1 and 2.2.
These will be the final ESF Open Calls; funding will be made available under the following investment priorities:
- Digital Skills (£1.29m)
- Development of Sector Specific Skills for Productivity (£1.62m)
- Employment Hub (£1.9m)
The focus of the calls is to support the businesses themselves to be able to take advantage of training opportunities related to digital or sector specific skills, and to create an infrastructure which assists in this development. The Employment Hub will focus on working with SME’s to increase the take-up of apprenticeships across the area.
The draft agenda for the calls launch is as follows:
10.00 Welcome
10.10 Overview of the economic landscape
10.25 Digital Skills Call
10.40 Sector Skills for Productivity
10.55 Employment Hub
11.05 Guest speaker TBC
11.20 Application Process Including Cross Cutting Themes
11.35 Summary and close
11.45 Event closes
These investments will need to be match funded. The call for applications was officially launched on 16 September and will close on 9 December 2019.