Skills

About

The UK Space Agency has asked the Space Partnership to facilitate the Space Skills Advisory Panel (SSAP) to bring industry, academia and government together to address skills opportunities and challenges for the UK space sector. As explained in the NSS In Action, the SSAP plays a crucial role in ensuring access to quality skills and training offers across the UK space sector. SSAP supports the development of future space workforce policy initiatives, ensuring coordinated action can be taken by government, academia and industry in resolving current and future skills gaps.

On behalf of the UK space sector, the Space Partnership Board will then agree how best to deliver the collective action required to address these gaps.

Purpose of the Space Skills Advisory Panel

The Space Skills Advisory Panel (SSAP) has been formed to:

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  Represent the skills related opportunities and challenges across the UK space sector in an open and balanced way on behalf of the communities across the UK space sector.
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  Identify the most appropriate collective action to address these opportunities and challenges. This collective action will be proposed to the Space Partnership Board on behalf of the SSAP by the Space Partnership Director.
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  Support the delivery of the agreed collective action both directly and by building a wider consensus across the UK space sector to ensure delivery.
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  Review the annual skills dashboard managed by the Space Partnership Director on behalf of the SSAP, contributing to the reporting for the dashboard as relevant.

Composition of the Space Skills Advisory Panel 

The Terms of Reference detail the planned composition of the SSAP, which will include 20 members in total. The Space Partnership Director is not a member of the SSAP, but facilitator of the SSAP. 13 of the 20 SSAP members will be appointed by their stakeholder group: industry appoints 5 representatives; academia appoints 3 representatives; government appoints 3 representatives; Satellite Applications Catapult and UK Space Ecosystem each appoints 1 representative. The remaining 6 panel members will be appointed following an Expression of Interest (EOI) process facilitated by the Space Partnership Director.