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Our team of Skills Brokers provide a free and impartial brokerage service providing advice and guidance to employers that can help them develop their workforce.

This support includes:

• Supporting employers to understand and navigate the Apprenticeship agenda including funding, recruitment and provider activity;
• Working with Apprenticeship Levy paying employers to utilise their own levy funds and identifying opportunities for Levy transfer to other employers;
• Supporting Non-Levy employers to source an appropriate Levy paying employer to transfer apprenticeship levy to them;
• Identifying appropriate public funding routes for employers in order to utilise existing funding opportunities and maximise training budgets;
• Signposting employers to other advice and support they may need to support the growth of their business.

As part of this service we have secured £1.1m of ESF funding to support employers across the city region to upskill existing employees in key areas. This new training fund will aim to identify skills gaps across the city region and provide up to 70% of funding towards prioritised skills needs. Our brokers will work with employers to complete a skills needs analysis and be able to identify appropriate training providers and funding routes for these businesses.

Funded Training through Videoconferencing

We are continuing to support employers across the LCR by providing funding of up to 70% towards the cost of training for those courses which cannot be supported through other publicly funded routes.

Given the current difficulties facing employers, and with many of their staff working from home, we can now support training on a remote basis through the use of videoconferencing facilities such as Zoom, WebEx etc. This ‘live virtual classroom’ environment will negate the need for employers to bring staff together in a classroom and we have a number of training providers currently set up to deliver training in this way.

Clearly not all training can be delivered remotely, however courses in IT or those which are theory based, such as Management, Customer Service, Mental Health, soft skills etc. are appropriate for this mode of delivery.

Employers who are interested in accessing training should register their details below. They will then be contacted by one of our dedicated Skills Brokers who will support them to access funding and engage with a relevant training provider.

This service is funded by the European Social Fund & the Strategic Investment Fund