The skills and employability of the local labour force are crucial to the ability of economies to respond to labour market shocks and adapt to global change. The quicker that the unemployed can be re-trained for new jobs, the more adaptable a local economy will be. However, a constraint on improving adaptability is the ability of the state to adequately and quickly reform the delivery of training, welfare systems and employability programmes to meet new challenges. A greater emphasis needs to be placed on the personalisation and localisation of service design, planning, and delivery. Personalisation is needed to combine different forms of support required by people with multiple barriers, and localisation is needed to empower local partners to design interventions and direct resources to meet local employer needs and target the most deprived areas and people. Decentralisation appears to be a necessary condition for joining up services at the point of delivery and for disadvantaged areas to devise solutions to tackle their specific problems.