The leadership gap in Norfolk’s new skills plan, and what manufacturers can do about it

Norfolk Chambers of Commerce and Suffolk Chamber of Commerce recently published the region’s new Local Skills Improvement Plan, and one of its five priorities for 2026 to 2029 reaches almost every manufacturer in the county, whatever they make: better leadership and management training.

Advanced manufacturing adds more than £3.8 billion a year to the Norfolk and Suffolk economy and employs almost 90,000 people. In West Norfolk alone it accounts for roughly 28% of the area’s total output, and the wider agrifood sector employs more than 93,000 people across the two counties.

On every one of those sites, output, quality and safety depend heavily on the people running each shift and section. They plan the work, deal with problems as they happen, manage the team and decide what gets improved.

Questions worth asking about your production leaders

The plan’s priority is a useful prompt to look at your own site:

• If your strongest shift or section leader left next month, who is ready to step up?
• Were your production leaders trained to lead, or promoted because they were good at the job?
• Can they read the production figures, manage a budget and make the case for a change, as well as manage people?
• Who owns day-to-day improvement on the floor, and how do you know it is happening?

If some of the answers are uncomfortable, that points to a training need. There are several ways to meet it, including in-house coaching, mentoring, short courses and apprenticeships. The plan describes leadership training as an area under particular pressure, because several widely used management apprenticeships, including Team Leader and Operations Manager, lost government funding for new starts from September 2026. For many employers, those were the main structured way to develop the people running their teams. So how can manufacturers cover this gap today?

Where apprenticeships fit

In England, an apprenticeship is a structured training programme, usually paid for through the apprenticeship levy or government funding, subject to eligibility, that an employee follows alongside their job, at any age and any stage of their career. Each is built on a national standard written with employers and finishes with an independent assessment of whether the person can do the job well. As well as trades, they cover office, technical and management roles, and many apprentices are experienced staff a business already employs.

For production leaders, the relevant programme is the Level 4 Process Leader apprenticeship. It was developed with employers including BMW UK, Rolls-Royce, Siemens, Toyota and the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink, and the good news is that it’s not among the programmes that lost funding in September. Skills England lists food and drink, assembly, moulding, metal processing, chemical processing and pharmaceutical production among the settings it covers.

Over a typical 24 months, it covers much of what the questions above point to: delivering production targets, managing budgets and resources, leading continuous improvement using lean techniques, managing health and safety, and developing a team. It usually suits someone already running a production team or about to step up into that role. How the cost is covered depends on the size of the business and the individual, subject to eligibility and current scheme rules.

Swarm Training, a Norwich-based independent apprenticeship training provider, offers the Process Leader apprenticeship as part of the portfolio of commercial standards it delivers for employers looking to develop their teams.

Jennifer Perry, CEO of Swarm Training, said: “The skills plan is right to put leadership on the agenda. On a production site, the person running the line has a direct effect on output, quality and safety, and they often step up because they’re good at the job rather than because anyone has trained them to lead. Process Leader is built around that role.”

About Swarm Training

Swarm Training is an independent apprenticeship provider and Community Interest Company based in Norwich, working with employers across England. It is rated Good by Ofsted, with Outstanding for Leadership and Management and for Behaviour and Attitudes, and delivers its training remotely so it fits around shifts and how each business runs.

Manufacturers who want to talk through whether Process Leader suits their team can contact Swarm Training on 0800 086 8199 or at [email protected], or visit www.swarmtraining.org.uk. The full Norfolk and Suffolk Local Skills Improvement Plan is available at www.nslsip.co.uk.