New Skills Catalogue launches at breakfast event

WYCC celebrated last week as its latest Skills Catalogue of training courses was launched at a breakfast briefing in Leeds.

Over 100 delegates from colleges, universities, training providers and partner organisations gathered to hear from the team about the 700+ courses that are now available through The Skills Service. The Skills Catalogue is available on the website and lists training from 24 training providers including colleges, universities and private training providers all in one place.

The Skills Service is funded by the European Social Fund and offers SMEs in the Leeds City Region planning support along with 40% funding towards the cost of training their workforce.

Award winning law-firm, BW Legal have used The Skills Service a number of times for employee training.

Learning and Development Manager, Samantha Cooke said “We are driven to upskill our colleagues to be the best they can be. As a growing company we wanted to explore all avenues to make sure we received high quality learning. We found The Skills Service was a great opportunity to access the best training for our staff.

“The Skills Service has enabled our colleagues to train in areas that will drive performance and productivity. We have received a variety of training supported by ESF funding and had a selection of providers on-site to deliver our training programmes.”

Joanne Patrickson, Project Director at WYCC said, “We’ve come a long way in a short space of time with The Skills Service project. This morning we also announced two new ESF projects that we’re looking forward to getting off the ground, and talked about the great stories from businesses who have benefitted from The Skills Service.

“We’ve provided training through a mixture of methods included courses from the original catalogue, and courses requested that were not already listed. We have commissioned new training providers to align the catalogue with employer demand and can now offer a wide range of courses, all with 40% funding available for eligible businesses.”

Businesses who can’t find the course they think they need already listed can enquire about receiving the training through the Specialist Skills route, where one-off commissions are possible to meet the training need.

Training provider Birkwood Plant was commissioned to deliver courses through The Skills Service. Sally Ramskill, Managing Director said, “Since working with The Skills Service we have found that more learners per business are coming on our courses because the business can access funding to make it more affordable. This is great for us and great for the business who can make sure their workforce are developing and can support business growth.”

View the Skills Catalogue and Enquire now for skills support through The Skills Service.

The event presentation was supported by creative agency Banana Kick.