Over 3,000 people in the Black Country have benefitted from free skills training in the last year, through a programme to help SMEs raise their productivity and boost business growth.
The Skills Support for the Workforce initiative is supported by the European Social Fund.
It delivers bespoke training plans and a range of skills-based courses to businesses, in order to rejuvenate the regional economy. Courses covering technical, leadership and customer-facing skills are among the most popular.
Ebrahim Dockrat, director of external funding at Calderdale College, which is overseeing the project, said: “We’ve seen evidence of businesses and employees alike benefitting greatly from the training they have undertaken. We hope that this inspires other companies to do the same and use the remaining £6.5 million of funding available.
"The only investment required is time; the courses can be arranged to work around the needs of businesses and can be held on- or off-site. With the huge infrastructure developments taking place across the region, it is incumbent upon businesses to have a skilled workforce that can meet the anticipated scale of economic growth in the Black Country.”
For more information, visit the Web site (
www.blackcountry.fundingunit.org.uk).