Listen to this story Members can listen to an AI-generated audio version of this article. 1.0x Audio narration uses an AI-generated voice. 0:00 0:00 Become a member to listen to this article Subscribe City & Guilds’ new private owner has put 75 roles at risk of redundancy. PeopleCert has today launched a formal consultation to restructure the awarding and training business, with around 6 per cent of its 1,250-strong workforce impacted. It follows a “detailed review” undertaken by City & Guilds’ senior leadership team and comes weeks after CEO Kirstie Donnelly and chief financial officer Abid Ismail were exited. The pair are now preparing legal action. The restructure proposals are intended to “simplify how the organisation operates, strengthen accountability and governance, reduce duplication and support continued investment in technology, operations, customer service and learner experience”, a PeopleCert statement said. “The proposals are also intended to create greater clarity in decision-making, improve quality and consistency, and enable teams to work more effectively together.” The majority of roles at risk are within “central support functions” but the company refused to name specific positions. The statement added that there will be no disruption to any of our learners, including students currently working through their assessments, or to the delivery or quality of qualifications during this process – claiming that the changes are designed to further “strengthen and enhance the reliability and overall quality of qualifications and services provided to learners and partners”. PeopleCert bought City & Guilds’ awarding and commercial business from the 148-year-old charity in October for around £166 million. The sale is the subject of a live Charity Commission inquiry, with the regulator examining “trustees’ decision making” and large bonuses paid to senior executives after the transaction. PeopleCert itself has also launched its own probe into the conduct of top City & Guilds executives during the sale. Neither inquiry has reported yet. Months after the acquisition, PeopleCert drew up plans to cut City & Guilds’ workforce bill by around £19 million over the next two years. According to a presentation to investors the savings will be made from “personnel cost synergies”, with “optimisation” to be driven through “natural employee churn” – affecting hundreds of jobs. One third of the vacant roles would be made “redundant” due to “overlapping functions”, another third would be relocated to Greece where costs are “up to 50 per cent lower,” and the remaining third rehired in the UK, the presentation suggested. ‘This will be a difficult and uncertain time’ A PeopleCert spokesperson told FE Week today that the company hopes to reach agreements on ways to “avoid dismissals, reduce the numbers affected and mitigate impact”. A statement to the press said: “The proposals are focused primarily on enabling functions, where duplication and inefficiency have been identified. Approximately 75 roles (6 per cent) are likely to be impacted by the proposals. “No final decisions have been made. The organisation is now entering a formal consultation process to gather feedback, consider alternative approaches and ensure all perspectives are reviewed before any outcomes are confirmed. “City & Guilds and PeopleCert remain focused on supporting learners, partners and employers, while continuing to modernise and strengthen long-term capability across the organisation. “We recognise this will be a difficult and uncertain time for colleagues whose roles may be impacted and are committed to handling the process with care, fairness and respect.” As well as the awarding business, City & Guilds runs three training providers – Gen2, Intertrain and Trade Skills 4U – which also transferred to PeopleCert but remain under the City & Guilds brand.
Irony Debacles In 15 May 2026 If the future of a flagship vocational institution can be reduced this quickly to redundancies, restructuring and consolidation, then perhaps the sector needs to confront the uncomfortable reality that educational credibility is now being treated as a commercial asset class.
J 23 May 2026 Try again with the notion that “collective consultation has begun” because it absolutely has not. They have shared no meaningful information with those impacted and leaves them with no means to make any informed choice about their future. Absolutely awful way to treat staff. Staff impacted are indeed from central services however some are also from the current operational teams trying hard to deliver the upcoming summer series. Surely that is now at risk? No internal communications about the proposed structural changes that will result from this either. Hang your heads in shame, People Cert.
MS 16 June 2026 City & Guilds Deserves Better Than This There was a time when the City & Guilds name stood for something more than a balance sheet. For nearly 150 years it represented craftsmanship, opportunity and the belief that vocational education could transform lives. That reputation was not built by corporate strategy or financial engineering. It was built by generations of dedicated employees whose expertise, commitment and integrity made the organisation what it became. Today, many of those people face redundancy. Whatever the commercial justification for restructuring, there is a profound difference between managing change responsibly and treating experienced employees as costs to be eliminated. The measure of any organisation is not how it behaves when profits are plentiful, but how it treats the people who created its success when difficult decisions are made. PeopleCert promised investment in City & Guilds’ products, platforms and people when it acquired the organisation. Yet the reality many employees describe is one of uncertainty, fear and a relentless focus on reducing costs. Public reporting has described planned workforce reductions and the relocation of some functions as part of wider cost-saving measures. The contrast is impossible to ignore. While long-serving staff face losing their livelihoods, public attention has focused on the extraordinary controversy surrounding executive bonuses paid after the acquisition—payments that PeopleCert itself has described as unauthorised and has sought to recover. Those events have inevitably damaged confidence in the stewardship of one of Britain’s best-known educational institutions. The people now paying the price are not the executives whose decisions are under investigation. They are the assessment specialists, customer support teams, qualification developers, administrators and countless others whose work earned City & Guilds its reputation over decades. An organisation can buy a brand. It cannot buy trust. It can acquire intellectual property. It cannot acquire the institutional knowledge carried by experienced employees. It can reduce payroll costs. It cannot easily rebuild the loyalty that is lost when people conclude they are valued only until a spreadsheet says otherwise. History is full of businesses that believed heritage alone would carry them forward after they dismantled the very culture that made them successful. Too often they discovered that reputation is easier to inherit than to preserve. The City & Guilds name has survived world wars, recessions and technological revolutions because people believed in its mission. If that mission becomes secondary to financial targets, then something far more valuable than jobs will have been lost. The employees leaving deserve more than polite corporate statements thanking them for their service. They deserve respect, honesty and recognition that they were never simply another line in a restructuring plan. They were the custodians of a name that generations learned to trust. That trust, once broken, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild.