The D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), which covers Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, has appointed Morgan Sindall’s Louise Townsend to chair its Construction Sector Action Plan and Skills Sector advisory groups.
The groups have been established to identify ways in which the economic impact of the recovering construction sector can be maximised through driving growth, training and employment opportunities for local people. D2N2’s objective is to create 55,000 new private sector jobs by 2023.
Louise said: “The D2N2 construction sector presents a wealth of economic development opportunity as it moves out of recession and into a period of growth. D2N2 is providing an unprecedented opportunity for public and private sector organisations to work together, to capitalise on the upturn in the construction industry to provide employment and training opportunities for new entrants into the sector.
“Part of our work has been to help identify ways in which the spending on construction in the LEP’s region is kept in the region. The sector is such a key economic driver and we must ensure that spending benefits the local economy as much as possible by working with the procuring bodies to ensure that maximum economic and social impact is driven into the procurement process .”
“We are working with our public sector partners to help drive economic growth through the construction activity in which Morgan Sindall is engaged.”
D2N2’s Senior Programme Manager for Sector Development, Lindsay Allen, said: “It is great to have Louise on board to represent the construction sector. It is clearly a significant industry in terms of job creation and working with our low carbon sector, sustainable construction is key to making the step changes to construction that will bring about jobs and wealth.”
Through championing improved public sector procurement strategies, supply chain and main contractor engagement as well as delivery of a more relevant training infrastructure to up-skill the workers, the sector group will be working during the summer period to identify a plan around these priority areas to support strong growth in construction in the region.
