Proskills urges packagers to take advantage of government’s training pledges

It aims to expand apprenticeships for adults aged over 25, which will mean 30,000 additional apprenticeships at a cost of around £90m over the next three years.

Trade union Unite, while welcoming the move, said the plans would only work "when employers start to play their part in investing in their workforce".

Andy Bradburn, head of delivery at Proskills, the sector skills council (SSC) for process and manufacturing industries, said he was "favourably inclined" towards any investment in skills development by the government.

"If there's money in the system, it makes our job easier, but we want employers in the packaging industry to contact us and tell us what their training needs are," he said.

Proskills is currently consulting on bringing the packaging industry under its remit, but Bradburn said the engagement of the industry had been "fairly minimal so far". The organisation had delayed its consultation because it "was not getting anywhere", he added.

He said this was partly due to the complex nature of the packaging industry, which covers manufacturing, printing, logistics and design, and because parts of it were already working with other SSCs, such as Cogent.

Proskills has launched a new online consultation at www.proskills.co.uk/packaging.asp and hopes to have some agreement by mid-December.

The organisation is able to link firms with training brokers through the government's Train to Gain scheme, which provides funding for firms to put their staff through national vocational qualifications (NVQs), mainly at Level 2.

The government also revealed expansion plans for this scheme, which three months ago reported that only 96,000 people had completed Level 2 qualifications, against a target of 1.25 million from 2007 to 2011.

Train to Gain, which was originally targeted at "hard to reach" employers, particularly small firms, will now be expanded to address the skills needs of all employers. The government will publish a detailed delivery plan by the end of this month.

Gordon Stewart, head of the Packaging Industry Awarding Body Company (PIABC), said until recently there had been a lack of well-established packaging-specific NVQs and, therefore, little take-up of Train to Gain by the industry.

However, PIABC now has a network of providers in place to help firms access the scheme, and the government funding "should encourage the packaging industry to increase its participation," he said.

Click here for more on the government plans.

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