Engineering community joins forces to respond to Government’s industrial strategy proposals

The Institution has joined up with other Professional Engineering Institutions, the Engineering Council and EngineeringUK in a new project led by the Royal Academy of Engineering to respond to the Government’s Industrial Strategy consultation.

Together we have issued a report, ‘Engineering an economy that works for all’, which calls for the Industrial Strategy to be ambitious and have a bold long-term vision.  The goal is to harness the UK’s international reputation for engineering excellence and forge a new global identity as a top destination for inward investment, innovation and global talent.

The report is a collaboration of all 38 professional engineering organisations representing over 450,000 engineers. It distills evidence and opinion gathered through a series of 10 workshops across the UK and a survey of the profession that received nearly 1,300 responses. 

We make a number of key recommendations, including calling on Government to broaden the strategy to address a wider range of interventions to develop skills, for example highlighting the need for urgent action to be taken in primary and secondary schools to address the shortage of teachers in Science, Technology Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects. In other areas we recommend the Government develops a long-term, integrated energy strategy that prioritises energy efficiency, and separately we propose “sensible and proportionate” arrangements to retain and attract non-UK nationals who are essential to the UK’s success in engineering, research and innovation.

We also address the need to encourage innovation and for the need for Government to demonstrate a greater willingness to accept the risk of failure, or perceptions of it, in its innovation support, including with the management of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. 

The aim of the report is to drive change in Government policy so that key engineering issues are at the heart of the Government’s Industrial Strategy.

The next step is a meeting with the Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy in mid-May where representatives of the PEIs and engineering bodies involved in this project, including Dr Colin Brown from the Institution, will be working through the recommendations with Government and offering our support on new policy development. 

You can read the full report here.