by business editor Trevor Sturgess

Employers across the county are to be given a bigger role in skills training as a way of easing the youth jobs crisis.

The Government wants a shift from public sector vocational schemes to employer-led partnerships and is injecting £250m into a nationwide pilot scheme.

A report "Employer Ownership of Skills" produced by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills spells out the problems and possible answers. Britain has slipped from 4th to 12th in the global competitiveness league table in just 12 years, and this is blamed on skills weaknesses that slow growth and keep young people out of work.

Commission member Sean Taggart, chief executive of Albatross Travel Group, based in Larkfield, near Maidstone, pictured above, said the scheme would "galvanise us to employ and develop more young people."

Speaking at the London launch attended by Business Secretary Vince Cable, Chief Treasury Secretary Danny Alexander, and Charlie Mayfield, chairman of John Lewis, he said: "We need to look at Kent and Medway to see it there are any themes of skill deficiencies. If we can prove that employers can take responsibly ownership for skills, there is a huge opportunity to shift the way vocational training is commissioned, delivered and experienced by businesses of all sizes. It's a huge opportunity that in Kent we need to grab."

Mr Alexander said employers were reluctant to engage with the public sector system. Mr Cable hoped small and medium enterprises (SMEs) would form bidding groups. "If the pilot is successful, it can be enlarged and become the main mechanism by which future training and apprenticeships are funded."