A PAN-DORSET Skills Commission is to be set up to look at ways of tackling skills shortages in the county.

The time-limited body, which would sit for a year from November, will take evidence of current shortfalls and report back on possible solutions.

Dorset and BCP councils will set up the body, working with the county’s Skills Board and Panel and the county’s Learning and Enterprise Partnership.

BCP deputy council leader Cllr Philip Broadhead says the councils decided to step in after in became apparent that although many people were aware of the problem nobody had stepped forward to take the issue on across the county.

“We have a bit of a skills shortage in the area and need to look at where there might be gaps in the market,” he said, “We will co-ordinate the effort and bring together the key players under an independent chair.”

Portfolio holder for Covid Resilience, Schools and Skills, Cllr Nicola Green told BCP councillors: “People have been skirting around the conversation for a while – someone needed to step into the space and take a lead.”

Overview and scrutiny committee chairman Cllr Steve Bartlett said, given the recent work on the Dorset Industrial Strategy, he was surprised that the issue had not been addressed elsewhere.

Both councils will need to give their go-ahead to the idea, expected to cost around £25,000.

Statistics show that 25 per cent of working people locally are due to retire in the next ten year; that a similar percentage of the working population had been furloughed with a high proportion thought to be at risk of redundancy. The county has also seen a recent average 150% increase in the claimant count, almost doubling for the 16-24 year-old age group.

A report says that at the same time graduates and highly skilled people are continuing to leave the area although a predicted 77 per cent of future jobs in the county are likely to need Level 5 qualifications, or above, from the present time until 2027.