Neighbourhood Employment and Skills Plans (NESPs)
What are NESPs?
Neighbourhood Employment and Skills Plans (NESPs) are intended to drive partner action to improve employment and skills in the most disadvantaged wards. It profiles the population in the target ward, including information on benefit recipients and employment barriers, reviews service provision and identifies action needed to achieve ‘closing the gap’ targets.
Initially used to inform the City Strategy in August 2007, the NESPs role has been expanded to cover all 20 wards in Walsall. The latest version of the ward NESP issued in August 2008 are available for download below.
Impact for local people
Overall the aim is to improve employment and skills services to those living in the most deprived wards. Each NESP provides an overview of each area to assist in this process and to identify the main gaps and areas of need, which can then be addressed by partners and service providers. This will lead to improved efficiencies in service delivery and communication between partners.
NESPs will identify a client profile for the ward, which will encompass:
- population and population profile
- ethnicity
- employment, unemployment and worklessness by target group (e.g., BME, lone parent, older people, younger people)
- benefit recipients – showing concentration within wards by type of benefit, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, length of time on benefit
- educational attainment
- a brief analysis of other underlying conditions in the area e.g. poor health, low income, etc
This information will then be used to:
- Identification of the main worklessness groups within the ward: who, where, scale
- analysis of how these compare to other wards/city region wide data, i.e. are these particular issues and problems to be addressed
- identification of the localities and groups which are priorities for action
- Identification of the key barriers and problems to be overcome by target groups e.g. skills, motivation, health, childcare, transport, access for jobs
Useful documents
See your local Neighbourhood Employment and Skills Plans:
- Aldridge Central and South (PDF 1.5MB)
- Aldridge North and Walsall Wood (PDF 1.1MB)
- Bentley and Darlaston North (PDF 1.8MB)
- Birchills Leamore (PDF 1.2MB)
- Blakenall (PDF 1.2MB)
- Bloxwich East (PDF 1.4MB)
- Bloxwich West (PDF 1.2MB)
- Brownhills (PDF 1MB)
- Darlaston South (PDF 1.3MB)
- Paddock (PDF 1.5MB)
- Palfrey (PDF 1.1MB)
- Pelsall (PDF 1.5MB)
- Pheasey (PDF 1MB)
- Pleck (PDF 1.1MB)
- Rushall Shelfield (PDF 1.6MB)
- St Matthews (PDF 1.6MB)
- Short Heath (PDF 1.1MB)
- Streetly (PDF 1.3MB)
- Willenhall North (PDF 1.4MB)
- Willenhall South (PDF 1.4MB)
- NESP Data Booklet August 2008 (included in all NESPs) (PDF 349KB)
Useful links
West Midlands Regional Observatory - Regional Integrated Economic Assessment
Contact us
Economic Regeneration Team
2nd Floor, Civic Centre
Darwall Street
Walsall
WS1 1TP
Telephone 01922 653620
Email econregen@walsall.gov.uk