Get Tees Valley Working Plan

The Get Tees Valley Working Plan is a regional work, health and skills plan, developed in response to the UK Government’s Get Britain Working White Paper, which aims to increase employment, reduce economic inactivity, mitigate health-related barriers to work and improve job quality.

With oversight from the Tees Valley Education, Employment and Skills Advisory Group, as the local partnership group, the plan has been developed by Tees Valley Combined Authority, with our local authorities, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Jobcentre Plus, and the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB), wider partners and stakeholders.

Local Get Britain Working plans are central to the Government’s ambition for a thriving labour market where everyone has the opportunity for good work and to get on in work and where we achieve the ambition of an 80% employment rate.

With a current employment rate of 71.9% in Tees Valley, seven out of ten working age adults, are in-work.

The priority for our Get Tees Valley Working plan is to ‘Keep Tees Valley Working’.

To achieve the national employment rate of 80% – Tees Valley would need to move an additional 33,300 more local people into work.

Local Get Britain Working plans will support other local strategies, and plans, including Local Growth Plans, Local Skills Improvement Plans and other health and work strategies.

The Get Tees Valley Working plan underpins the ‘workforce’ element of our Local Growth Plan.

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the current labour market activity in the Tees Valley. It includes a detailed description of the scale and distribution of economic inactivity, unemployment and employment across the region, and the key risk factors that drive the high levels of regional economic inactivity.

The plan sets out how our integrated employment, health and skills system will work together to reduce inequalities, improve experiences of our health and care services and improve the health and wellbeing of people living and working in the Tees Valley by 2035.

Further work to develop the Second Edition of the plan will take place between October 2025 and March 2026.

The Get Tees Valley Working Plan – First Edition (September 2025) and the supporting evidence base can be found in the links below.