Businesses including BT, Capgemini, Cisco, HP, John Lewis, the Metropolitan Police, Microsoft, Morrisons, O2, Royal Mail and UBS have joined together under the title of the Tech Skills Partnership to bid for public skills funding.

The creation of the partnership, with the backing of the UK’s skills council, is seeking to gain funding from a pot of £340 million, from the Employer Ownership of Skills Pilot.

The funding is designed to promote industry skills and develop economic growth with industry support. Previous examples of industry support can be seen in the expertise that the ICT industry brought to the creation of the UK’s new ICT curriculum.