Comment on LSC £50m process training fund story
6 Aug 2009
From: Mark Smith, director PTL:
Telford, UK - Thank you for your recent coverage of Polymer Training Limited’s recent reduced access to the Government’s Train2Gain funding. The non-appearance of the ‘ring fenced’ £50m training fund for the UK’s Process Industries sectors is indeed a large and significant story.
My main concerns, however, are with the management and workforces of UK plastics processing companies. Does it matter to our businesses that they may no longer have any part of the public purse and that their access to funded (wholly or in part) NVQ qualifications and specific training in plastics skills is now likely to disappear?
This news has been a heavy blow for PTL but we will most certainly absorb and survive it – with new products, services and projects coming online. Much less certain is the continuing health and survival of the UK’s plastics training infrastructure – very little of which will now receive any central support.
For the record, it should now be noted that the most basic building blocks of UK plastics manufacturing training – direct access to NVQ polymer qualifications – are being removed.
Without these, and the reducing ability to add even elementary value to the plastics manufacturing process, the UK industry cannot prosper. Indeed the signs of the recent reversal of manufacturing disappearing to the Far East is likely to be stopped in its tracks.
At PTL, over the coming week, we are currently organising to fight our corner and to campaign for the restoration of the industry’s funds. We invite all corners of the UK’s process industries to join with us in this activity - in the service of their people, their businesses and future.
