Campaign promotes Cumbria as the place to live, work and invest
Two publicity campaigns highlighting Cumbria as the place to live, work, study or invest are being re-launched by Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership (CLEP) after being paused during the COVID-19 pandemic.
‘Our Future’ celebrates Cumbria’s young people and promotes the great careers available to them within the county, whilst the ‘Your Future’ campaign encourages people from outside of Cumbria to come here to live, work, study or invest.
Both of these campaigns were initially launched just prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 but had to be put on hold during the pandemic.
Cumbria has the slowest growing population in England and analysis, completed for the LEP’s economic strategy, identified that there will be almost 20,000 too few people to meet employment demands within the next decade.
The combination of the pandemic and EU Exit has meant that these workforce challenges are now being felt, with businesses already facing significant labour shortages.
CLEP Chief Executive Jo Lappin said that if the labour supply challenges are to be addressed it is really important that all of our young people understand the great career opportunities that are available to them, here in Cumbria, and that they are aware of the excellent Further and Higher Education offer to help them develop the necessary skills to build their future career.
She said: “It was very unfortunate that we had to pause the campaigns soon after they were launched. However, the need to highlight Cumbria as the perfect location in which to live, work, study or invest is greater than ever given the current labour challenges that the county is facing.
“’Our Future’ is aimed at our 14 to 25 year olds. Our young people are our most valuable asset and we want them to know how important they are to Cumbria’s economic future and make sure that they are aware of the excellent career options available to them here.
“Many young people are only aware of the careers available in their immediate home area, yet across the whole of Cumbria there are a huge number of employment options and we need to make sure that we showcase all of these.
“We also need to encourage people to come and work here in Cumbria, to make sure that we have enough employees to meet the needs of our businesses. There are real opportunities in Cumbria and we need to attract people from across the UK to take up these opportunities.
“For the ‘Your Future’ campaign, we will be working with our partners to make sure that Cumbria’s exceptional offer is widely promoted outside of Cumbria and throughout the UK.”