Employment & Adult Skills
Learn Devon · Connect to Work · Employment Hubs · Devon County Council · Performance & Partnerships
Our Vision
Employment & Adult Skills is proud to serve the people and communities of Devon. As part of Devon County Council, we exist to make a real and lasting difference — helping individuals build skills, enter and sustain employment, and participate fully in their communities.
Through Employment and Skills, we contribute directly to the Get Britain Working agenda. Operating as a single, connected system across Devon, we provide a place-based
framework for high-quality employment and skills support — delivered through in-person, online and telephone channels and underpinned by our network of Employment Hubs and qualified professionals.
Our work is rooted in a commitment to social inclusion and social mobility. We are here for those who face the greatest barriers — whether through previous educational experience, health, disability, life circumstances, social background, or geography. We are equally here for Devon’s employers, supporting them to access, develop and retain the diverse, skilled workforce they need to grow.
We will build and sustain a reputation — with residents, employers, commissioners and partners — for integrity, innovation, strong relationships and exceptional value. Everything we do is guided by that commitment.
Our Offer
For Individuals
Access
We will strengthen and promote access to our services through a place-based model that puts people at the centre. Individuals will be able to access support in person across Devon, as well as online and by telephone, ensuring a flexible and inclusive access model that responds to different needs and circumstances.
Our Employment Hubs and learning centres provide the infrastructure for a professionally delivered, strengths-based offer. Through qualified and experienced staff, individuals will receive personalised guidance and a clear, tailored route towards employment, education or training.
Support
We will continue to develop and enrich our offer to ensure individuals are supported at every stage — whether they are moving into work for the first time, returning after a period out of employment, changing career, developing skills for career progression, or accessing higher and further education.
Our offer will include clear pathways from informal and tailored learning through to accredited qualifications and higher-level study. We will work closely with further and higher education institutions to support coherent progression routes. Where face-to-face delivery represents the most effective and financially viable model, we will prioritise it within the overall delivery mix.
We are committed to working with individuals and wider services to ensure that every person receives support that meets recognised quality standards, including DWP fidelity standards bfor Connect to Work, so that outcomes are real, sustainable and impactful. We will develop and promote a dedicated offer for young people aged 16–18, supporting the SEND strategy and Devon County Council’s priorities around Corporate Parenting and Care Experienced Young People, where DCC funding and support applies.
Where this aligns with commissioning priorities, identified need and financial viability, we will support a light-touch approach to Torbay geographical coverage within the wider skills offer, complementing rather than duplicating existing provision across the Devon and Torbay footprint.
For Employers
Access
We will work in partnership with employers across Devon to help them access the skills and talent they need. Our Employer Engagement function operates across Economy and Skills and wider council services, connecting businesses with inclusive employment opportunities and building strategic relationships across sectors.
Our employer engagement will be vacancy- and sector-led, aligned with the Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority (DTCCA) Skills Plan and informed by employer intelligence. This intelligence will actively shape our curriculum development and work-based learning offer, ensuring we remain responsive to the real needs of Devon’s economy.
Support
We will deliver qualifications funded through the Combined County Authority and Devon County Council up to Level 4, where there is a clear and evidenced market need or a gap in existing provision. We will also offer short work-based learning opportunities that are directly aligned with sector priorities and employer demand, together with support for employers to adopt inclusive employment practices, widen access to talent and strengthen workforce sustainability. Where this aligns with commissioning priorities, identified need and financial viability, we will support a light-touch approach to Torbay geographical coverage within the wider skills offer, complementing rather than duplicating existing provision across the Devon and Torbay footprint.
In addition, we will work with Devon County Council to develop an in-house employment and skills offer to support DCC in meeting its own workforce objectives under the People First strategy.
Success Measure
Employment & Adult Skills is committed to continuous improvement and to delivering measurable, meaningful impact for residents across Devon — particularly those who face the greatest disadvantage. Success is defined not simply by participation, but by progression: into work, into further learning, and towards greater economic resilience and independence.
Learn Devon and Connect to Work operate as a single, connected system with shared accountability for outcomes. The KPIs below reflect that joined-up ambition.
KPI 1: Inclusive Engagement
At least 79% of participants across the Employment & Adult Skills offer are from priority or disadvantaged groups, including those affected by previous educational experience, health conditions, disability, life circumstances, social background or place.
Purpose: Ensures a shared focus across learning and employment services on the residents facing the greatest barriers, and provides a common access lens across Learn Devon and Connect to Work.
KPI 2: Qualification Achievement
At least 79% of learners undertaking accredited learning through the Employment & Adult Skills offer achieve their qualification.
Purpose: Reflects Learn Devon’s core strength in delivering high-quality, accredited learning and provides the foundation for progression into employment for Connect to Work participants.
KPI3 :Learning Outcome Achievement
At least 85% of learners achieve their planned learning outcomes, including skills gain, confidence, employability and personal development outcomes.
Purpose: Captures the breadth of what learners gain — beyond formal qualifications — and recognises the transformational difference that high-quality learning makes to people’s lives and confidence.
KPI 4: Progression and Next Steps
At least 75% of participants are supported to progress into further learning, training and/or employment or self-employment, including supported transitions
through Connect to Work.
Purpose: Creates a shared responsibility for progression outcomes and encourages joined-up planning between curriculum, employment support and employer engagement teams.
KPI 5: Sustained Employment Outcomes (Connect to Work)
A composite measure tracking employment entry, earnings at initial and sustained thresholds, and in-work retention and progression, achieved within
agreed programme timescales.
Purpose: Focuses on earnings, sustainability and long-term progression — not just job starts. Reinforces Connect to Work’s role in tackling economic inactivity and reducing the risk of individuals cycling back out of employment.
Strategic Priorities
Achieving our vision and KPIs requires focused, sustained effort across three interconnected priorities. These workstreams are the engine of our plan — creating the conditions for staff to thrive, individuals to succeed, and partners and commissioners to have confidence in our offer.
1. Invest in Curriculum Development
A high-quality, responsive curriculum is the foundation of our success. We will:
- Refresh and develop our offer for communities and employers — building provision that is accessible, engaging and demonstrates clear value for learners, employers and commissioners alike.
- Develop new provision to address genuine local skills shortages and gaps not met by existing providers across Devon.
- Review our existing offer regularly, identify underperformance early, and make evidence-led improvements to drive KPI achievement.
- Embed progression explicitly and consistently across the offer — every learner should be able to see a clear route forward from the point they engage with us.
- Align curriculum development with employer intelligence and the DTCCA Skills Plan, ensuring our offer remains relevant, valued and market-facing.
2. Invest in Our People
Our staff are our greatest asset. The quality of our provision, the outcomes we achieve, and the reputation we hold with commissioners, partners and residents all depend on a skilled, confident and resilient workforce. We will:
- Provide sustained professional development for all staff, ensuring capability is aligned with strategic priorities, quality standards and the requirements of our commissioned programmes.
- Build resilience across Employment & Adult Skills in response to the changing funding and delivery landscape, including the opportunities and challenges presented by Local Government Reorganisation.
- Strengthen leadership capacity and accountability across the service, ensuring management capability supports quality, improvement and delivery against strategic objectives.
- Promote clear, open communication across the service and with external stakeholders — so that our value, impact and ambition are visible and understood.
- Invest in Fidelity-aligned training and FE CPD to meet DWP fidelity and Ofsted quality standards — protecting both programme performance and the confidence of our commissioners.
3. Deliver a Place-Based Offer
Devon is a county of diverse communities, economies and geographies. Our place-based model is central to how we serve residents equitably and effectively. We will:
- Work across Economy and Skills to deliver an integrated, coherent offer that supports communities and businesses in every part of Devon.
- Maintain and develop our Employment Hub network as a core place-based asset within the Employment & Adult Skills system — providing visible community access, supporting employer connectivity, and strengthening the delivery infrastructure for DWP and CCA-funded programmes.
- Use the hub network to support geographically consistent Connect to Work delivery, ensuring DWP standards are met and employer engagement is effectively enabled across Devon.
- Plan proactively for Local Government Reorganisation, working with Combined County Authority partners, shadow authorities and DWP to ensure continuity of provision and the confidence of all commissioners and stakeholders through the transition.
Strategic Partnerships: Informing Skills, Employment and Health
Employment & Adult Skills operates at the intersection of skills, employment, health and economic development. To deliver the greatest possible impact for Devon’s residents, we must do more than deliver excellent provision — we must actively shape the systems and strategies that determine how people access support, how investment is directed, and how services connect across organisational boundaries.
This section sets out our strategic approach to working with the Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority, the Integrated Care Board, the Department for Work and
Pensions at both local and national level, and Devon County Council — ensuring that the intelligence, data and insight we generate through day-to-day delivery actively informs policy, commissioning and investment decisions across these partner bodies.
Devon and Torbay Combined County Authority (DTCCA)
The DTCCA is our primary commissioning partner for adult education and skills funding, and a critical strategic relationship for the long-term shape of provision across the Devon and Torbay geography. Our role extends beyond delivering against the DTCCA Skills Plan — we are committed to actively contributing to it. We will:
- Feed employer intelligence, learner outcome data and skills gap analysis directly into the DTCCA Skills Plan development and review cycle, ensuring that commissioning decisions are grounded in evidence from Devon’s communities and labour market.
- Work with the CCA to align the adult education offer with health, employment and economic inclusion priorities — ensuring that skills provision actively supports the DTCCA’s ambitions for inclusive economic growth across Devon and Torbay.
- Engage proactively with the CCA during Local Government Reorganisation protecting continuity of provision and the value of existing commissioning investment.
- Position Devon’s Employment Hub network as a delivery asset for CCA-funded programmes, demonstrating geographic reach and community access that maximises the value of devolved funding.
NHS Devon Integrated Care Board (ICB)
The relationship between health, skills and employment is well evidenced: economic inactivity driven by ill-health is one of the most significant barriers facing Devon’s residents, and tackling it requires genuine collaboration across health and employment systems. We will develop a strategic relationship with the NHS Devon ICB that moves beyond referral into genuine system co-design. We will:
- Engage the ICB as a strategic partner in the design and development of employment and skills support for people with health conditions, disabilities and mental health needs — ensuring our offer reflects clinical understanding of barriers and effective intervention.
- Share employment and skills outcome data with ICB partners to demonstrate the social return on investment in early intervention and supported employment — building the evidence base for joint commissioning of Work and Health provision across Devon.
- Align Connect to Work IPS delivery with ICB health priorities, ensuring employment support for people with mental health conditions, long-term conditions and complex needs is integrated with wider NHS and community health pathways.
- Explore and develop joint opportunities for NHS workforce skills development, supporting health and social care employers to access skilled staff through Learn Devon and the Employment Hub network, addressing critical sector workforce gaps across Devon.
- Position the Employment Hub network as a coordinated access point within the wider Devon Work and Health gateway, supporting more coherent triage, assessment and referral pathways across employment, skills and health support.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) — Local and National
DWP is both our contracting body for Connect to Work and a critical strategic partner in the national mission to tackle economic inactivity and reform employment support. We will build a relationship with DWP that goes beyond contract compliance, using Devon’s delivery experience and data to influence the design and direction of future national programmes. We will:
- Maintain a proactive, transparent and regular relationship with DWP’s local relationship management and performance teams — ensuring that programme delivery intelligence, local labour market insight and emerging risks are shared in a timely and constructive way.
- Use Connect to Work performance and fidelity data to demonstrate the impact and reach of supported employment in a rural, geographically dispersed county — contributing evidence to national policy conversations about how the Get Britain Working agenda can be delivered effectively outside urban centres.
- Engage DWP centrally and locally in planning for Local Government Reorganisation, ensuring that programme continuity, TUPE obligations and any novation or new contracting arrangements are managed transparently and well in advance — protecting both contract value and service continuity for participants.
- Engage actively with future DWP commissioning opportunities — including programmes targeting Universal Credit claimants and emerging Work and Health initiatives — positioning Devon’s Employment Hub network as a proven delivery infrastructure for place-based employment support at scale.
Devon County Council (DCC)
As part of Devon County Council, we have a unique opportunity — and responsibility — to connect employment and skills insight with the Council’s broader strategic priorities. We will work across DCC directorates to ensure that employment and skills are visible and valued in the Council’s decision-making, and that our delivery actively supports the Council’s statutory duties and corporate ambitions. We will:
- Contribute employment, skills and labour market intelligence to DCC’s strategic planning and policy development — particularly in relation to public health, adult social care, the SEND strategy, Corporate Parenting and Care Experienced Young People, and the People First workforce strategy.
- Develop the in-house offer to DCC as employer — helping the Council meet its People First objectives through targeted workforce development, leadership skills, inclusive employment practices through CtW and access to funded qualifications up to Level 4 where market need is evidenced.
- Use the evidence generated through Learn Devon and Connect to Work to inform DCC’s understanding of economic inactivity, disadvantage and inequality across Devon — strengthening the Council’s ability to make the case for investment and to fulfil its role as an anchor institution in Devon’s economic recovery.
- Work collaboratively across DCC Economy and Skills, Public Health, Adult Care and Support, and Children’s Services to ensure joined-up planning and delivery that removes duplication, closes gaps, and maximises the impact of public investment in people across Devon.
Our Approach to System Leadership
Across all four of these relationships, our approach to strategic partnership will be consistent: we will come as informed, data-led contributors — not just service recipients or contract holders. We will use the intelligence from 9,000+ annual learner and participant interactions across Devon to build a compelling, evidence-based picture of what works, where gaps exist, and how joined-up investment in skills, employment and health creates the greatest social and economic return.
We will engage at a senior level with each partner body, report regularly on performance and impact, and ensure that the voice of Devon’s residents — their experiences, barriers and aspirations — is visible in strategic conversations that shape how public services and investment are directed. In doing so, we will position Employment & Adult Skills as a trusted system partner and a valued contributor to Devon’s future.
Our Commitment to Stakeholders
We recognise that our success depends on the trust and confidence of the partners, commissioners and communities we work with. This plan has been developed with that accountability front of mind.
To Residents and Learners
We will deliver high-quality, accessible support that is genuinely tailored to your needs and circumstances. You will receive honest, professional guidance, a clear plan, and consistent support to help you achieve your goals — wherever you are in Devon.
To Employers
We will work in close partnership with you to understand workforce challenges and connect you with skilled, work-ready individuals. Our curriculum and engagement offer will be informed by employer intelligence, ensuring it delivers clear value to your organisation.
To Commissioners and Funding Partners – DWP, ESFA, CCA
We will maintain full compliance with contractual and regulatory requirements, including DWP IPS/SEQF fidelity standards, data obligations, Ofsted Further Education and Skills requirements, and the DTCCA commissioning framework. We will evidence performance clearly, engage transparently, and deliver the outcomes for which we are commissioned.
To Devon County Council
We will demonstrate value as an integrated part of the Council’s offer, contributing to the People First and Brighter Futures strategies, supporting Corporate Parenting and Care Experienced Young People priorities, and playing a positive role in the Council’s contribution to economic recovery and social inclusion across Devon.
To the NHS Devon Integrated Care Board
We will engage the ICB as a genuine co-design partner in employment and health provision — sharing data, building the evidence base for joint commissioning, and ensuring that our support for people with health conditions and disabilities is clinically informed, pathway-cconnected and measurably effective.
To Strategic Partners and the VCSE Sector
We will build and maintain relationships based on trust, reliability and shared ambition for Devon’s residents. We will deliver on our commitments to referral agencies, employer networks and strategic partners — and we will be open about our performance and plans.
Updated August 2026