Everton Football Club among Government's new training designers

Everton Football Club, Balfour Beatty and the National Grid are among a raft of businesses who have been successful in their bid to design vocational skills training.

Round 2 of the Government’s Employer Ownership scheme will see these employs deliver joint-training ideas, designed to get young people into work.

Employers will match Government funding to develop their ideas on work experience, pre-apprenticeships, traineeships and apprenticeship programmes.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “We want the Employer Ownership Pilots to test a new approach, built around an open and flexible offer for employers. I am happy to see that businesses have taken up that challenge.

“The difference in these schemes is that we will channel funds through employers rather than providers. I look forward to seeing the transformation that this investment will bring to shaping the skills and training of this country’s workforce.”

UK Commission for Employment and Skills chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield said: “I’m particularly pleased that several successful bids are not from sole companies but are in effect industrial partnerships, led by forward thinking employers and including colleges and unions, and all aimed at ensuring their patch, be that a sector or a region, plays the greatest possible part in the growth of the UK economy.”

Other successful firms include Tillhill Forestry Ltd, who will develop training in forestry skills; Westley Group ltd, who will train people in castings engineering and foundries skills; and Filtertechnik, who will develop awareness of career paths in the low carbon and environmental goods sector.