Train to Gain for Yorkshire and the Humber

Train to Gain, a new service from the LSC, is being rolled out to Yorkshire and Humber businesses during the coming months, to help them get the training they need to succeed.

The service will operate though a network of specialist Skills Brokers who will help employers identify the skills their business needs and provide impartial advice on the best training provision that can meet those needs. Brokers will identify which elements of any training needed are subsidised and which the employer will need to pay for and they will provide information on the range of qualifications and training packages available to both the employer and employee. The Brokerage service will be free to employers.

The training and skills advice offered by Train to Gain will be flexible, of a high quality, responsive and made available at a time and place to suit employers' needs. It will enable more adults to achieve a first full Level 2 qualification and improve their basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Skills brokerage includes the provision of impartial and independent advice by a skills broker to an employer about their training needs. Skills brokers are specialist advisers that have been trained to national quality standards and they act in the interests of the employer.

David Hodges, Regional Skills Director for the LSC in Yorkshire and the Humber, comments, "Train to Gain is building on the fantastic success of the employer training pilots which have helped over 200,000 people employed in 25,000 different businesses to gain skills for life and Level 2 qualifications."

The service aims to work with 33,000 employers in 2006/07 and 53,000 employers in 2007/08 and successive years to 2010. Of these, more than half will be new or hard to reach employers.

Train to Gain is important because without a skilled workforce, businesses won't be able to compete; jobs will be lost and fewer people will be able to get the jobs they want.