CATrain access Landskills East Funding

We are pleased to be able to announce that through our partners in ART we are now able to fund eligible courses and training projects through the Landskills East project up to a 65 %. We will be holding a series of briefing sessions through the autumn - if you wish to attend or would like an informal chat about eligibility criteria please contact us here: landskills@catrain.co.uk . More on this exciting development later.

Landskills East is supported under the Rural Develeopment Programme for England by EEDA, Defra,and the EU co-ordinated by Lantra, managed by the Rural Enterprise Hub at Easton College in partnership with Norfolk County Council

A busy week doing what?

This week should have been quiet but even with many people on holiday it has turned out to be a little bit busier than usual.

Monday, Visits to two of our regular and long serving customers to establish training needs for the next 6 months. This is always useful because it helps us plan and book the right instructor and facilities in time. Cambridge Wildlife Trust who were one of the visits was extremely beneficial as we have only ever communicated by e-mail or telephone ansafone before! It really is useful being able to names and faces together. More on how we work with CWT for another blog.

Tuesday, Another customer – Crown Nurseries and the fruition of some training earlier in the year. Crown Nursery benefited from three of their staff receiving IT training through the Women in Work scheme we promoted last year. This resulted in a review of the way they use computers in the office and led to us installing a Windows Homeserver network to provide efficient cost effective back up and document sharing. We achieved this as a software only solution using existing hardware. Through our IT experience we were able to help our customer right through from initial training to developing a new way of IT management in the office.

Wednesday, was finishing off and checking the backups at Crown went as planned. The afternoon ended up on the telephone discussing new courses.

Thursday, Mmmh, well it happens to us all – Paperwork day. I often wonder what will happen when we arrive at the paperless office.

Friday is planning day. After a week of enquiries we need to sit down with the calendar and look at New and existing courses. Over the coming weeks we will be highlighting some of the changed to existing courses and the new courses and legal requirements, one of the first of these will be the new DRIVERS CPC for professional LGV and PCV drivers - From the 10th September 2008 a new legislative directive comes into force with the aim to improve the skills and knowledge of all PCV and LGV drivers throughout their working lives. We will dedicate a complete post to this in the next few weeks.

Help for Heros and Why

You may notice that for nearly a year we have carried a link to Help for Heroes on the right hand side of our blog. Nothing to do with our business or training but this news report highlights why we we feel we should do "something" If you read the article, from the BBC, and then may be think about Help for Heroes

Training - The view from Federation of Small Businesses

Traka Forklift Security - the way forward?

We often talk about "key out " policies with machinery - here is one way that technology is helping solve the problem in a practical way.

Communications

One of the most important items for any business is the ability to communicate and be known to be in communication and able to respond to customers. In an odd sort of way this was emphasized to me again on Monday.

A bit of history - back in the early 1990's when I worked for CPB at Thriplow we had, wait for it - two "mobile phones" I use the term mobile in its' loosest sense. When one of these had a problem I looked in Yellow pages and found a small local business called CBS Communications in Beche Road, Cambridge. Arriving at CBS comms. I was amazed that the guy didn't write off our equipment and try and sell us a newer model but no, he cannibalised another 'phone and sorted us out there and then. Since that day and through three different companies I have continued to use CBS communications for my mobile phone(s) and this week that loyalty was again restored.

Recently, having expanded our 'phone and data package things weren't quite right so Linda at CBS told us to send our Vodafone bill in and someone would sort it. We did this last Friday, catching the last post. Five o'clock on Monday evening an email from Marcus who "is" CBS Communications Ltd. By Tuesday at 09:00 all the issues we had were sorted. This reminded me why nearly twenty years ago I had decided this was a company to rely on.

So as with a lot of our philosophy of buy from and support local business, our judgement has brought its' own rewards.

So a free plug for CBS HERE

Health and Safety - Good News

Maybe the investment all our customers have made in Skills training and Health and Safety based subjects is starting to pay off!

From the HSE website:

In agriculture there were 26 fatal injuries in 2008/09 with a corresponding rate of 5.7 deaths per 100 000 workers. This compares to a rate of 9.9 when an average of the previous five years is examined.

For the last 10 years at least the figure has stayed around the 50 deaths a year mark so this really is something of a break through.