Skills England launched a new battery manufacturing apprenticeship unit on 23 March, built specifically for the Agratas gigafactory under construction near Bridgwater in Somerset. The factory is expected to create 4,000 jobs and generate £700m a year for the South West economy once operational.

What's interesting isn't the apprenticeship itself. It's how fast it was designed, and what the method tells you if you manage adult skills programmes at a combined authority.

The existing qualification didn't fit

Agratas told Skills England that the existing battery manufacturing operative apprenticeship, a 36-month Level 3 programme, was too long and too broad for the jobs they needed to fill. They're standing up a factory. They need trained workers in months, not years. A three-year apprenticeship designed to cover the full breadth of the sector doesn't solve that problem.

Skills England's response was to build something new from existing parts. In early February, they ran a design workshop with the Electrification Skills Network and representatives from battery clusters in the North East and West Midlands. They followed up with Agratas, other employers and academic specialists. Then they assembled a Level 2 apprenticeship unit from occupational standards that already existed, rather than starting from scratch and going through the full qualification approval process.

Six weeks later, it was live. UCS College Group signed a memorandum of understanding with Agratas to lead delivery.

The method is the point

This came out of Skills England's new Investment and Infrastructure Skills Service, set up to unblock skills bottlenecks for large employers and infrastructure projects. The battery unit was the eighth short course launched under the Growth and Skills Levy, after seven others the previous week covering AI leadership, EV charging installation, electrical and mechanical fitting, modular building assembly, solar PV and mechanised welding.

The pattern across all eight is the same. Employers said the existing qualification was too slow or too broad. Skills England adapted what was already in the occupational standards library rather than designing from zero. The resulting units run between 30 and 140 hours and can be delivered in 1 to 16 weeks.

The lesson for combined authorities is straightforward: employer-led training doesn't mean building everything from scratch. It means auditing what already exists and cutting it down to what the employer actually needs, fast.

Where this applies to ESOL

If you run devolved AEB programmes, you've probably seen the same dynamic with English language training. A care employer needs staff who can write incident reports and communicate with residents. A hospitality employer needs workers who can take complaints and explain menu items. The standard ESOL pathway is a 12 to 18 month general English qualification with a 6 to 18 month waitlist on top. Birmingham has closed its ESOL intake entirely.

The qualification is too long. The scope is too broad. The employer needs something specific and they need it now. It's the same problem Agratas had with the battery apprenticeship.

The difference is that ESOL hasn't had its "six weeks from workshop to launch" moment yet. Combined authorities are still commissioning the same classroom programmes with the same waitlists, even though the employers in their patch can't wait that long.

West Yorkshire puts 24% of its Adult Skills Fund towards ESOL, the highest proportion of any combined authority. That's a lot of money going into a system where learners can wait over a year to start. If Skills England can design a battery apprenticeship unit in six weeks by assembling existing standards into something shorter and more targeted, the same logic applies to vocational English. A care worker in Bradford doesn't need 270 hours of general English. They need to learn the difference between "refused" and "declined," how to write a handover note, and how to understand a resident with a West Yorkshire accent.

What programme managers can do now

If you're managing adult skills at a combined authority and you have employers telling you they need language-ready workers, there are a few things the battery apprenticeship model suggests.

First, treat the employer's timeline as the constraint, not the qualification's. If an employer needs workers in eight weeks, a 12-month ESOL course isn't a solution. Look at what shorter, more targeted options exist, whether that's digital platforms, intensive short courses, or employer-embedded training.

Second, audit what you're already funding. If your ESOL provision is running waitlists of six months or more, the money isn't matching the demand. Some of that budget could be redirected towards faster, more targeted interventions that get people into work while they wait for, or instead of, a classroom place.

Third, watch what Skills England does next. The Growth and Skills Levy short courses are a signal that government is moving towards shorter, employer-shaped training units. If this model extends beyond technical skills into essential skills like English, combined authorities with devolved budgets will be the ones who need to commission and deliver it. Getting ahead of that now, by piloting faster vocational English pathways, puts you in a stronger position when the policy catches up.