Negotiating a success

Today  I spent another  day attending  a course  rather  than instructing!

With much thanks to Camgrain at  Balsham for providing excellent  facilities and with the  services of  Bob White from At Last training we settled  down to the first  of two  management  courses - Negotiating Skills, next  Friday  being Time/Meeting management with a  nod to  new  technology.

Bob provided an entertaining and informative  day with a  diverse  group of trainees all taking away  much food for thought.

Next week (2nd Dec) is a different  slant on "getting things done" which already  has generated  much interest.  If you want to  join us  please email enquiries@catrain.co.uk for  more information.

A week of Forklifts and Telehandlers

A week of contrasts.  Away from the training provider side of the business and this week was spent out in the  field instructing in the  operation of Counterbalance  Forklifts and Telescopic handlers.

Starting the week with a two  day counterbalance forklift course  for  students on farm placements. Really encouraging to see  enthusiasm and capability in the  new  generation of farmers.

Next: A Telescopic handler course for  all the staff on a traditional family  farm.   Again enjoyable to chat  and work with  some  of the  more  mature members of the  farming community while  putting the world to rights!

Finally,  and something very different on Thursday.  Time to have  my own Lantra Awards Operators certificate for  Telescopic Handlers renewed!  So attending a course  as a trainee with a couple of managers from research farms in Cambridge, Craig Ireland did an excellent  job of running the course and plying us with Chocolate  digestives.  Thank you also to NIAB for  hosting the day.

So a  great week with some  fascinating people and a wide variety of equipment to operate. The paperwork is already  filed with  Lantra Awards who are doing an excellent  job of turning round registrations and certificates at present.

Friday then is all about  planning next week and closing down this  weeks courses on the system. 

Health and Safety Courses Autumn Winter 20011-12

As  part of our  continuing campaign for  Landbased Industry Health and Safety Awareness we are  pleased to announce our  dates  for  Health and Safety Awareness Courses across  East Anglia.  Benefiting from Landskills  East funding these  courses will  also provide a  Lantra Awards  certificate of  attendance.

Last year we  presented a  number of courses  specifically  for particular  areas of the  industry.  We also picked up  nationwide  news  coverage  being featured on BBC Breakfast  News (along with  some  lambs!)

Our  courses  in Health and Safety awareness benefit  from over  30  years  in the  Agricultural industry and use  recent examples and experience to show  how your  business  can be  safe and remain productive.



Dates:
18 November - South Cambs
07  December - Hertfordshire
11 January - East  Suffolk
01  Feburary - South Cambs
07 February - East Suffolk
08 February - Hertfordshire

Other Courses  Click HERE

October 2011 Update

Dates available now for
PA4 (S) PA 6 and PA2 Courses click HERE
Emergency Aid Click HERE
Welding Abrasive Wheels HERE
Management Courses HERE
More Autumn dates being added. Just email us (HERE)for more information.

Harvest 2010

Yes that is  right Harvest  2010.  As we all bask in an Indian summer  I was  reminded of this  video I made at the  latter end of a difficult harvest in 2010  here in Suffolk.  With thanks to Farmer and  Combine  operator  Peter Holloway:

Anglia Rural Training gains Landskills East Award

You may  be interested to know that  ART  (our  umbrella  organisation) received the  award for  “Most Progressive Delivery Partner” at  a Funding awards ceremony held at "Jimmys Farm"  by Landskills East last  night.  This  in part reflected  the support of  all of our customers   who  have supported the  Landskills East  funding initiative for  skills  development in the  East of England by attending  courses  provided by  CAT Ltd.  

Jo  Bruce who  has  managed the project on behalf of ART said:

This project has   been all about  teamwork right from the beginning - Landskills East, Norfolk County Council  and their delivery partners - Us - The  East Anglian Training providers who make up Anglia Rural Training and then our  customers who have supported the  project and made it the  success it is.

At CATraining  Ltd. we are also quite pleased in our own right as we  designed and developed the database used to enable  ART to  manage the project.   The  database  has  so far managed over  2000 courses from the 10 members of Anglia Rural Training  from initial grant application through to the management of the  repayments  from Landskills  East all at varying skill levels, grant rates (and VAT  changes).

In the next  few  weeks we will  be  launching our  CATraining Ltd.  Autumn  programme, much benefiting from Landskills  East funding.

New Services for 2011/12

More technology I am afraid. September is a time we spend planning for the Winter season. After an exceptionally busy year we have revisited how we can better action training requests and supply information to our customers. Over the next few months we will be contacting all our customers with records of services provided over the last two years. We will also be targeting relevant training courses to our customers so they can plan and budget training over the coming months. By October we hope to launch online access for our regular customers to records and upcomimg course information. Eventually this will be available to all our customers. So in summary this year will be about giving you the information you need and responding to training request efficently so you, our customer, can keep track of your training and skills development in a simple and efficient way. Just to remind you: Landskills funding still available, The funding rates change with the moon cycles, have an idea? need advice on funding? Talk to us now - we will navigate the minefield for you!

21st C Training

The changing face of training.

On the day that Steve Jobs steps down from Apple we  have  some  changes in how we   have improved our  service to  you, our  customers.  The  connection is  Apple.

Today we  ran our  first course  fully provisioned through an ipad and iphone.  The  presentation and smartboard was  run through an ipad, the trainee photographs were  captured on an iphone.  When the weather went wrong for  our outside  based course we even used an app on the ipad to track the satellite image of the rain to plan our  days  training.  By this  evening Lantra Awards  had our  paperwork scanned  and processed on the ipad emailed ready for processing tomorrow and our training partner  Mid Kent training had  both their paperwork and their  invoice (!).  Job done

Lantra Awards are turning around our   online  claims in record time - Thank you  Steve  Jobs!  (Record so  far is  three  days, how  can we  beat that  Sharon @  Lantra  Awards!)

Over the  coming weeks we  plan to  further  refine this  system for all our  courses with  CAT  attendance  certificates despatched the  same  day as  training completes and online  traceability  for assurance  scheme auditing.

CATraining, not just another  training provider.

Autumn Course Planning underway

While everyone is  busy with their outside work at the  moment we are starting the autumn  training schedule.

First few  courses are  now online with  Health and Safety Awareness  dates and information HERE

NRoSO updates  dates and information HERE

More will  be added in the  coming weeks in readiness for our  autumn program.

New HSE Figures for 2009/2010 released

From HSE, Headline  message here:

• In 2009/10 the rate of fatal injuries was 8.0 per 100 000 workers. This is slightly below the average figure for the previous 5 years of 8.2 per 100 000 workers. However, agriculture still has the highest rate of fatal injuries of all industries.
• In 2009/10p Agriculture accounted for 0.9% of the employees in Britain, 1.4% of reported injuries to employees (15% fatalities, 2% major and 1% of over three day injuries). The Labour Force Survey (LFS)¹ estimates that around 3% of all non-fatal injuries occurred in Agriculture in 2008/09 (three-year average).
• Agriculture has one of the highest rates of reported major injury of the industry sectors. In 2009/10p, there were 242.1 major injuries per 100 000 employees in agriculture compared to 203.1 in 2008/09. 

Read the  summary on HSE  Website  HERE

The Good News - Forklift Deaths Fall

In a press release today the  Fork Lift Truck Association (Full report  HERE) announced that there had  been a dramatic fall in fatalities involving Forklift trucks.  As providers of Lantra Awards accredited  training in Industrial Forklifts and Telehandlers it is  excellent to  be able to provide a  good news story and show  how training does have  real tangible benefits.

Find out  more  about  our  Forklift Training Courses HERE 

Microsoft 365 Launch Date Announced

John Roskill, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Partner Group announced through a tweet yesterday the public release date of Office 365. In the tweet he says:

June 28th is the date for General Availability of Office 365! 

As a  Microsoft Partner we  have  been trialling this  product and the on-line  opportunities it allows for  e-mail and business co-operation and management. We have  been waiting for this announcement in order to publicise the  benefits  to our  customers.More on this as  June 28th approaches.

Meet us at the Shows this Summer

We are  about   at the  shows!

Suffolk Show  1st June:We'll be around, drop us a line if you want to  meet up!

Attending a Landskills Health and Safety Event?  -we will see you at Shuttleworth, Milton College, Easton Farm Park..

Going to  Cereals we  are about on day 2- in the afternoon we will  be on the Landskills  East stand C452.

CATraining Ltd Forklift and Telehandler Courses Updated

With  new presentation materials  and a new interactive  structure our updated  courses in Forklift and Telehandler  operation meet today's  demands. Based on Lantra  Awards  integrated training and assessment courses we  can now provide a unique training experience using the latest technology  for  learning and skill development.

Click HERE for more information

May Day Week end

If you are using the  week end to catch up on what training opportunities are about feel  free to  drop us an e-mail.  We  will  reply to all enquiries as soon as possible.

If not  have a  great week end - Chris

Pesticides Information and Courses

We have a  new  page for information on Pesticide training and courses:
You can find the page here: http://www.cambridgeareatraining.co.uk/pesticides.html .

W/C 25/04/2011 Updates

Brushcutter and Health and Safety Course updates -  please view  via  our  NEWS pages Click HERE .Includes our  new  video course  demonstrations.

Spring 2011 News

We are filling up our Summer calendar - Open course dates are now available on our Courses information page . 


The  HSE , together  with NFU and Lantra  SSC are  running a major  campaign on cutting fatalities and deaths in Agriculture - we  have a number of course running over the  next  few  months to support this.  More information on our  News page.

We are  about to launch a number of new services through our website - more on this later.

Spring Course update

We have now presented the the new updated Lantra Awards Health and Safety Course. Combined and developed specificly for Potato farmers, feed back has been positive, so a big thumbs up to Lantra Awards for providing the new materials.

We already have two more courses booked. Interested, gives us a quick e-mail.

Our Course page HERE has new courses and dates being added through now , ready for Spring.

Finally:

We are extremely lucky to have secured the services of Christine Walkden for a special day out at Trumpington Hall, see HERE for details.

Revised Lantra Awards Course Now Available

24/01/2011: We are plerase to announce we can supply the revised Lantra Awards Working Safely in Agriculture/Horticulture .
• Content is closely aligned to real hazards and risks encountered in agriculture/horticulture workplaces.
• Extensive use of real accidents/case studies investigated by HSE
• All 10 learning outcomes to support achievement of the Level 2 Award in Safe Working in Agriculture and Production Horticulture (QCF) qualification.
Dates for this course can be found here

Lantra Awards H&S Courses