Rewiring skills: Why ITPs must be part of the solution

Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s commitment to “rewire the state” rests on the proposition that decisions should be taken as close as possible to those affected by them. For education, skills and employment, that could represent a profound change - and a significant challenge for organisations operating across local and regional boundaries, including many Independent Training Providers (ITPs).

The Government’s new operating principle of “devolving by default” offers two possible futures. One creates more responsive local skills systems in which providers can innovate, integrate services and meet employer demand. The other replaces a single national bureaucracy with a patchwork of systems, contracts, priorities and rules. The success of devolution will depend on realising the first while avoiding the second.

A changing skills landscape

Devolution is not starting from scratch. The majority of the Adult Skills Fund is already controlled by mayoral strategic authorities. While the English Devolution White Paper also proposed removing the ringfences around Skills Bootcamps and Free Courses for Jobs, giving strategic authorities joint ownership of Local Skills Improvement Plans and a greater role in the Youth Guarantee and employment support.

Together, these reforms are bringing adult skills, economic development and labour-market policy closer together at the local level. It creates the possibility of joining up provision that has traditionally been divided between different departments and funding streams: engagement and pre-employment support, occupational training, apprenticeships, in-work progression and help with barriers such as transport, health and childcare.

At first glance, this place-based settlement appears to play to the strengths of FE colleges and universities - civic institutions anchored in their communities. But a focus on these institutions alone risks overlooking another vital pillar of post-compulsory education: ITPs.

What are ITPs?

In practical terms, ITPs are organisations operating outside the statutory school and college system that deliver vocational, technical, or employment-related education and training. They are often defined narrowly as commercial or charitable providers. ‘Independent’ describes their ownership and governance – not necessarily their source of income. Many ITPs receive substantial public funding through apprenticeships, the Adult Skills Fund, Skills Bootcamps, 16–19 study programmes, or devolved authority contracts. Others do not. Some are large national or international organisations with extensive facilities. Many are much smaller and highly specialised.

While ITPs already work with localities to address area-specific needs and collaborate with colleges, local leaders, combined authorities, most ITPs will be operating around the margins of public policy working more directly with businesses, often concentrated in particular occupations or sectors.

Opportunities for ITPs

ITPs tend to be closely connected to employers, experienced in workplace delivery, and capable of responding quickly to changing demand. They frequently have particular strengths in the sectors - including construction, engineering, digital, logistics, health and social care - on which local growth plans depend. They can also bridge the divide between skills and employment. An ITP working with employers knows not only which qualifications are required but where vacancies exist, what prevents people from filling them, and how training can be organised around the needs of a workplace. This practical intelligence is essential if devolution is to create functioning lifelong learning systems that can improve outcomes rather than merely relocate administrative responsibility.

From contractors to strategic partners

The principal challenge for ITPs is to move from being treated as downstream contractors to becoming strategic partners in local economic development, helping to create more coherent and flexible pathways into work and progression.

ITPs should therefore be involved from the outset, when local skills strategies and delivery plans are being developed. Their employer networks, sector expertise, and understanding of learner barriers can help authorities determine what is deliverable, at what scale, and within what timeframe.

This requires strategic authorities to see ITPs as part of system design, not simply as a procurement option. Devolution should make it easier to test new approaches, including modular training, specialist provision, and intensive programmes linked to major local investments.

Yet devolution must also avoid fragmentation. If every strategic authority develops different funding rules, data requirements, assurance systems, and processes, smaller and specialist ITPs will be disproportionately disadvantaged. The result could be less competition and provider diversity, with established local institutions favoured at the expense of employer and learner choice.

A national core with room for local action

The answer is not to resist devolution, but to distinguish clearly between what must remain national and what should be decided locally. A successful system must retain common national standards, portable qualifications, and proportionate, consistent accountability arrangements. Commissioning should be based on demand, quality, and outcomes, rather than provider type or location.

Within that framework, local flexibility should allow strategic authorities to fund incentives, bursaries, employer brokerage, specialist modules, and additional provision linked to local growth sectors. Innovation funding should enable places to test new ways of integrating employment, skills, and wider public services, with successful models evaluated and shared across the country.

Commissioning must change too. Strategic authorities should offer transparent, multi-year opportunities that give providers sufficient certainty to invest in staff, facilities, and employer relationships. Contract sizes and procurement requirements should not exclude smaller specialists.

Above all, ITPs need a formal voice in local governance. They should be represented on skills boards, involved in Local Skills Improvement Plan development, and included in the design of the Youth Guarantee, employment support, and sector programmes.

Devolution will not succeed simply because more money is controlled outside Whitehall. Its real test is whether employers can recruit the skilled workers they need, whether young people can see credible routes into good jobs, and whether adults who have fallen out of the labour market can receive coordinated support to return.

Rewiring the state must therefore connect all providers more closely to local decision-making, without disconnecting employers and learners from the strengths of a coherent national skills system.