A government body has launched a campaign to address the skills shortages in the logistics sector.
The sector skills council for distribution firms, Skills for Logistics, has warned that employers are losing out on funding that is available to improve skills and ultimately improve their turnover.
It has launched a national ‘Skills Pay’ campaign to redress the balance.
It said the UK logistics industry was in danger of falling behind its European counterparts. This could potentially have great consequences for the national economy, and for the future competitiveness of the sector’s workforce, according to the council.
The campaign has received backing from distribution firms including DHL Aviation and Wincanton.
Mick Jackson, operations director at Skills for Logistics, said: “The logistics industry is the fifth largest sector in the UK economy, turning over £75bn a year and employing 2.3 million people, which is 8% of the total UK workforce.”
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Jackson said that while the construction industry, which employs a similar number of people, receives 13% of publicly funded training, the logistics sector received less than 2%. He said that this figure needed to more than double year on year if it was to train the 230,000 people needed to meet its share of government targets.
Skills for Logistics and the partner organisations supporting the Skills Pay campaign are actively promoting the benefits of publicly funded qualifications and urging employers to take advantage of the workforce development tools available to them, Jackson concluded.
