News and Issues

The project aims to bring together key players in the sector to identify employer needs, enable employers to access a workforce in deprived communities with the skills they need, and improve communication between employers and training needs providers.
Phase 1: Undertaking research to gain a full understanding of the issues faced by the horticulture industry to enable the sector to focus on the key issues. This will include:

Undertake a review of the current state of the horticultural industry across the county of Norfolk, to identify key sector needs.
Mapping out the needs of the sector against measures of deprivation, as outlined in the OCSI.
Develop a Training Needs Assessment for the industry, based on one to one interviews with employees and employers.
Working with training providers across rural sectors to analyse the skills and training gap within the horticulture sector and how this relates to the wider rural economy.

Phase 2: Dissemination and application of key findings from the research. This will include:
Dissemination of findings to the sector and sub regional, regional and national decision makers.
Develop a training group of horticultural business and learning providers to ensure life long learning and skill development are a focus of the industry.

Work with support agencies and training providers to develop suitable and relevant training to enable individuals to gain access into the horticulture sector and develop career opportunities.

There have been a number of recent studies and on going sector group work to identify the skills needs of key rural sector, including tourism, engineering and agricultural and food processing. However one key sector that has never been researched is horticulture.

East Anglia is the largest horticulture-producing region in the UK with 41,761 hectares of crops grown. In Norfolk, horticulture makes up a significant part of the rural economy accounting for 27,080 hectares of farmed land and a value of £166million. This accounts for 15% of agricultures contribution to GDP in Norfolk. However very little is known about how the industry is run, what challenges and issues it faces now and in the future, and what support it needs to tackle them. This lack of information on this sector is due to horticulture not receiving subsidies under the CAP.

Horticulture operates on a number of scales. The large scale field vegetable producer, the intensive greenhouse producer and the small-scale niche business all work with different supply chains and towards different markets. This complexity results in issues, problems and opportunities being missed.

In 2005/06, the Norfolk Farm Study highlighted that there is very little information available about the horticulture sector and information on the volume and value of the sector is currently unknown. A project report produced by Norfolk County Council in 2006 illustrated that the industry is under some stress and has failed to demonstrate growth in recent years, in part due to lack of skills within the sector.

A recent report produced by Promar International for the National Horticultural Forum outlined that attracting UK labour back into the horticultural sector has proved to be very difficult, in part due to a negative employment image linked to hard work, low pay and limited career prospects. The report highlighted that better career prospects and training would help resolve the issue.

The 2012 Olympics will create both opportunities and threats to the horticulture sector, however, the LSC has identified that there is a current skills shortage in the land-based sector for the Olympics games and that there is also a shortage of training providers. Norfolk’s close proximity to London could result in significant numbers of seasonal workers not seeking work in horticulture during the summer of the games, resulting in increased labour costs for produces. The Olympics also provides opportunities in respect to the demand for landscaping plants and seasonal fruit and vegetables.

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