C2S spoke to Andy Bates, Finance Director, Gloucestershire College about their plans for 2021
We’ve started 2021 by welcoming new apprentices and employers on board thanks to our brand new January apprenticeship starts.
2021 will be an exciting year of development at Gloucestershire College. Our status as an institute of technology has awarded us £3 million to develop new IT and cyber facilities opening in Easter 2021 at our Cheltenham campus, next door to GCHQ. We will also be launching our million-pound centre for cyber start-ups and local businesses which will act as a nucleus of innovation in the heart of Cheltenham’s growing cyber scene.
We launched a series of online courses open to all in 2020 which have been really popular. Online learning is here to stay and we’ve expanded our offering for the new year.
I’d encourage all local businesses to take a look inside their organisations and reflect on the skills they will need to prosper in 2021 and beyond. Our job at Gloucestershire College is to ensure local organisations have got the right skills they need to enable their businesses to grow; whether that’s training new talent or upskilling existing workforces to match with expanding demands in industry.
There is currently a great deal of financial support available to help businesses of any size bring the skills they need into their workforce including apprenticeship grants and government-funded short courses. Our Business Hub team are here to offer advice and support your business, get in touch with our consultants: business.hub@gloscol.ac.uk.
Our aim for 2021 at the College is to help Gloucestershire come back stronger.
