Corporate Leaders

The Recruitment & Skills workstream has supported the production of the West London Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP), which was signed off by the Secretary of State for Education in August 2023. Previously the group has supported WLB’s efforts to improve West London Labour Market Information leveraging Lightcast, as well as providing peer-to-peer support on gifting of Apprenticeship Levy underspend to high-quality apprenticeships in local SMEs.

As part of the LSIP delivery the West London Youth Careers Summit is planned for 9 November to continue to build local partnerships between employers, schools and colleges.

Download the Q1 2022 West London Labour Market Insights report.

This workstream is focused on addressing the lack of sustained investment in West London’s electricity infrastructure as a key constraint on sustaining economic growth whilst transitioning to net zero. The Local Area Energy Plan (LAEP), which WLA boroughs commissioned has been drafted by Arup and will soon be published. CLAG members have influenced the LAEP and it gives a clear view of the network pressures and significant investment needed across north-west London over the next decade, but urgently in Ealing, Hounslow and Hillingdon.

• Read WLB CEO Andrew Dakers’ speech at the Capital West London summit in June on West London’s energy network capacity constraints.
• The House of Commons Environmental Audit committee has been taking evidence on ‘Enabling sustainable electrification of the UK economy’.  Heathrow made this submission reflecting CLAG’s shared concerns.
• Nick Winser’s (UK Energy Commissioner) report on ‘Accelerating electricity transmission network deployment’ was published on 4 August.  The good news is that he believes major grid infrastructure can be upgraded in 7, not 14 years.  Read WLB’s response and Letter in the FT.
• The group has also been looking at the potential for increasing the fleet of Hydrogen vehicles, particularly HGVs, in West London.  This would leverage our existing hydrogen fueling stations.

The Business Growth & Innovation workstream is supporting different aspects of delivering the London West Innovation Network programme.

The Sense of Place & Identity workstream has two projects.

Corporate volunteering: several times a year corporate volunteering and community investment leaders from local corporates come together to share best practice and identify opportunities to collaborate.

Place-brand development: the group has been engaged through 2022-23 in scoping the next phase of Capital West London with West London Alliance.  The ambition is to run a tender exercise in October 2023.