A Ten Point Plan Skill Strategy

The Strategy focuses on tackling four priority areas that emerged strongly from research with employers. These areas critically underpin the skills and labour needs of the sector, which in turn are hampering the productivity of the sector:

· Management and leadership

· Customer service

· Chef skills

· Retention

In order to effectively tackle these areas, the following ten point plan has been developed:

1. A Single communications channel
2. Management and leadership
3. Right Qualifications and funding
4. Supporting small businesses
5. Customer service
6. Chefs
7. Industry code of practice
8. World class skills delivery
9. Attracting high quality people
10. Broadening the appeal of the sector

The next section sets out the ten point plan, including a description and rationale for each point of the plan, targets and specific commitments from employer representatives and key partners. The status of these commitments is highlighted as agreed, proposed or in principle, depending on the development of discussions/agreement reached at this stage.

Through the discussions with key partners and employer representatives a number of barriers have been identified that if not removed will hamper the effectiveness of the strategy to meet its ambitions. A separate discussion paper outlines those barriers.