The London Development Agency (LDA) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) have begun joint research on the skills that workers will need to deliver a successful 2012 Olympic Games in London.
The research will analyse the skills and training requirements needed to build the Olympic Park and stage the Games, along with the legacy development in Stratford, east London.
The joint research will analyse the skills needs resulting from previous Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth Games, while also reviewing examples of best practice in skills and employment training.
David Hughes, the LSC’s regional director for London, said: “We will seize this opportunity to help local people gain new skills, which will remain a fantastic legacy for London and its residents.”
Michael Brown, deputy chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Building, said the skills audit was “exactly what the construction industry needed” to deliver the project on time and on budget.
“We estimate that the 2012 Games will need 7,000 construction workers. In comparison, the Sydney Games required 10,000 workers and the current Beijing build has approximately 20,000,” he said. “London must demonstrate higher productivity levels than both Sydney and Beijing through increased off-site production and the development of new skills.”
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In a separate development, the Home Office has announced that offenders on non-custodial sentences could be used to plug skills gaps to help deliver the 2012 Games infrastructure.
In its five-year strategy to get offenders to ‘give back’ to society by doing unpaid work, the Home Office said it expected the number of hours done by offenders to double from five million in 2003 to 10 million in 2011.
