About West London Working

West London Working brings together the agencies responsible for employment and skills to reduce the high number of west London residents not in employment.

To help providers keep up to date with news, events and policy, West London Working has developed this e-bulletin. Our aim is for it to become a valuable resource as the employment and skills landscape goes through a period of significant change.

Keep a look out for our upcoming series of workshops and capacity building sessions for small and medium providers. These will include policy overviews as well as practical master classes to help you make the most of upcoming funding opportunities.

The first West London Working provider event was held on Thursday 14 May.

Nearly 30 small and medium sized employment and skills services providers came together at St Andrew’s Church Centre in Ealing to network, hear from the WLW team about their work programme to date and feed back to the team about current issues.

Themed around “build your bid”, the workshop aimed to give providers tips on how best to communicate their specialist offer to potential prime contractors.

The keynote speaker was Phil Dack, Senior Business Development Manager at Sarina Russo Ltd. With extensive experience working for major employment services providers, Phil provided practical advice and insights based on his insider knowledge of what potential primes need from specialist providers and how to communicate this most effectively.

He emphasised the importance of keeping up to date with news from the Department of Work and Pensions on their Supplying DWP website. This is where all the announcements of upcoming contracts and information for bidders are posted.

Build your bid resources – Phil has put together a quick guide for potential sub-contractors as well as a sample template to help develop your specialist offer and effectively pitch it to a prime.

The preferred bidders for round 1 of flexible New Deal have now been announced and are available on the DWP website. In London, A4e and Calder Holdings Ltd were successful in the central London, Lambeth Southwark and Wandsworth contract package areas.

The flexible New Deal will replace the current New Deal 18 – 24 and 25+ and Employment Zones programmes. It represents a significant shift away from a large number individual contracts with a many employment and skills providers, to a few contracts with prime contractors. Primes will be responsible for working with specialist and niche providers to help deliver improved employment outcomes for clients.

West London was not in round 1. It will be included in round 2 with further details available on the Supplying DWP site in coming months.

Futurebuilders provides loan financing, often combined with grants and professional support, to third sector organisations in England that need investment to help them bid for, win and deliver public service contracts

Current products include funding for short term cashflow or development needs, to support the development of consortia to bid for contracts and to deal with the effects of the recession.

For more information go to the Futurebuilders website.