As an alternative to Apprenticeships, Train to Gain provides a large, well publicised funding opportunity for companies with learning and development requirements.

Funding decisions are made on a regional basis.

Leadership and Management

• Available for those at managerial or directorial level; the first recipient in a company has to be the senior director/business owner.

• Designed for SMEs of 5-249, but some regions expand this upwards to up to 999 and downwards to SMEs with 2+ staff

• The funding is a reflection of a director’s L&D needs as evidenced in their PDP

• Up to £1.5k is available per person, split as follows:
  o £500 grant from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC)
  o Up to £500 funding from the company is matched by the LSC

• Interested companies need to contact the relevant person given at the end of this document, so that a visit can be arranged to discuss the development plan

• The funded activity has to take place within 90 days of approval by the regional contact, although a series of activities that run over several months can count as one funded activity – for example, multiple revision days/exams

• The funding is paid by the LSC once the company has paid for the activity and submitted an invoice

• L&M funding is in place until the end of 2011 – it has not been announced what will happen after this time

• Listed activities that can receive funding are:
  o Coaching
  o Mentoring
  o Qualifications
  o Non-qualifications based training

‘Additional’ qualification funding

• Each LSC region is allowed to fund or part-fund a certain amount of ‘additional’ qualifications. This simply means another qualification at a level that someone already has eg funding someone for Certificate in Insurance when that person already has A levels or a degree

• Each LSC region allocates up to 20% of its funding for ‘additional’ qualifications at Level 3, 4 and 5 – this allocation will reflect the regional priority (which is not always financial services, so not all regions will give any funding to our programmes)

• This scheme won’t be as large as the Leadership and Management scheme but could be used to part-fund Diploma studies in a region where financial services has been identified as a priority.