Additional £10m skills boost to support growth

Employers in Creative Media across the UK welcomed the Government's additional boost for skills development of up to £10m over two years announced in today’s Budget. This boost to skills will support sectors, key to UK economy, in their ambitious plans for growth. This adds to the £6m already announced in The Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. The Chancellor has now ear-marked new Government co-investment to a total of £16m to match industries’ leading to a total of £32m. This will provide entry and professional level training for over 5,000 individuals working in film, high-end TV, animation, video games, and additionally, now the key sector of VFX(Special Visual Effects). The investment will support additional employer led proposals over and above the commitment to levies and new collective arrangements in video games, agreed as part of the Government’s consultation on the tax reliefs. Large employers with interests across these industries, and groups of small companies collaborating together, will be enabled to bid for co-investment for proposals that meet the key skills and training challenges that have been identified by the industries as being priorities. Creative Skillset has been charged with managing this investment through its Skills Investment Fund and will work with representatives of each industry across the UK to ensure that all investments made will be targeted at areas of priority. Stewart Till CBE, Chair of Creative Skillset and CEO of Sonar Entertainment said: "Our industries have identified the UK's skills and talent as one of the principal drivers of growth and of our global reputation. We applaud the Government for incentivising co-investment and providing this much needed injection to support growth in our priority economic sectors.  Crucially, this news is totally aligned with employers’ ambitions to develop an innovative industrial partnership for the Creative Industries to take end-to-end responsibility for skills in our sectors." Creative Industries Minister Ed Vaizey said: "The UK has a world class content production sector. Today’s package of measures, announced in the Budget, recognises the significant economic contribution made by our highly skilled creative content industries. It demonstrates Government’s ongoing commitment to supporting innovation and investing in talent to help keep the UK ahead of the game when it comes to creative excellence." Alex Hope, Managing Director & Co-Founder of Double Negative, Co-author of the ‘Next Gen’ Report and Creative Skillset Board Member said: "The Government's recognition of the content production centre and visual effects' position within that is hugely welcome. The measures announced today offer significant opportunity to drive this sector forward and invest in our greatest asset - the tremendous talent existent in the UK.” Stephen Garret, Chairman of Kudos, Executive Chairman of Shine Pictures and Creative Skillset Board Member said: "The UK Creative Industries are renowned for having a world-beating skills base. A new challenge is making sure that we can boost growth and properly resource increased levels of production so that we compete even more successfully on the global stage.  It is fantastic to see today's additional financial commitment from the Chancellor to support the skills and talent development we need to help our industries step up to this challenge." The investment will be routed through Creative Skillset's Skills Investment Fund which currently manages film industry investment and will now extend its scope to the new beneficiary sectors of video games, animation, high-end TV and VFX. The announcement is an endorsement of the model of public and industry co-investing together, through industrial partnership, to take a co-ordinated approach to identifying, funding, and addressing skills gaps critical to future success. The investment will be available from April 2013.