Our Providers

Our providers play an active role in partnerships and collaborate well together. A number of providers are represented on our Board, including Nottingham Trent University, New College Nottingham, Nottinghamshire Futures, Enable and the Nottinghamshire Training Network.

The Nottinghamshire Training Network provides member services for Work Based Learning and Apprenticeship providers, with a focus on quality improvement. Enable, the Voluntary & Community Sector learning skills and employment consortium play a valuable role in enabling VCS providers to deliver against larger contracts, including supporting them with capacity building, quality improvement and bidding opportunities. This infrastructure means that Nottinghamshire has a strong and vibrant voluntary sector, who have been able to deliver on large contracts such as the Future Jobs Fund and Neighbourhood Learning for Deprived Communities. Their membership includes a wealth of specialist expertise including Rural Community Action Nottinghamshire, Framework Housing, Nottinghamshire Dyslexia Association and Self Help Nottingham, as well as neighbourhood based organisations such as BEST in Broxtowe and Chub in Bilsthorpe.

We have strong Further Education colleges and Higher Education Institutions in the county and large concentration of full time students in Nottingham City. New College Nottingham recently won a Beacon Award for its work engaging with employers, and was commended for its work to widen participation. In addition, West Notts College is commended as Outstanding across the board by OFSTED and our universities regularly receive accolades for academic performance, innovation and work with industry.

Many of our partners work together to deliver our Making the Connection model, which is a partnership designed to help local people to access the jobs created in new developments or through inward investors. Jobcentre Plus, the local authorities and the Skills Funding Agency work together to develop coherent packages of support for the benefit of both individuals and employers. This has brought together VCS organisations, other local providers such as Care Training East Midlands and mainstream organisations such as Castle College and Working Links to develop pre recruitment ‘routes to work' coordinated by the Making the Connection team hosted by the local authorities.

We provide opportunities for providers to collaborate together, including through bidding opportunities such as the Nottinghamshire Loves Learning celebration, or through events such as our Work Programme event in October 2010 where potential prime contractors were able to meet local providers.

During 2011 we intend to develop these opportunities for collaboration and influence through the establishment of a Provider Forum.