Skills are a fundamental pillar for enabling new and existing industries to grow and thrive.

Developing skills is a pressing priority for businesses that find it difficult to attract the right talent in sufficient numbers. Skills development helps to meet current and future demand and address the UK productivity gap. This is particularly critical in sectors that are at the forefront of innovation and technological change, where the availability of skills fuels the growth of advanced industries and is critical to deliver against national and global priorities such as net zero, health, digitalisation, levelling up and inclusivity.

As national assets, grounded in regional ecosystems, Catapults develop deep understanding of the barriers to market in their sectors including emerging labour demands. Catapults work with businesses, industry councils, supply chains, education delivery providers and others, to develop suitable skills strategies, building on the required capacity and capability at national, regional and local levels.

By helping companies to remain at the cutting edge of innovation, Catapults help to attract, train, and retain talent and transfer expertise into their sectors through innovation programmes and supporting the implementation of skills delivery across supply chains. Catapults help education providers to align with industrial strategies and policies, shaping the national agenda alongside the curriculum while promoting emerging technologies for potential career pathways.

Catapults are working coherently to map and foresight the future requirements for skills in evolving industries. Internally, Catapults are continuously equipping their own workforces with the next generation of cutting-edge knowledge, much of which is transferred to relevant sectors through people mobility. Take a look at just some of the ways in which Catapults are helping to shape future skills.