Elmfield Training has confirmed that its “directors have taken steps to protect the company through an administration process”.

In a press statement sent to FE Week, Elmfield said: “The board and its advisers have been working hard with major stakeholders in recent weeks to try and put the business on a sounder long term footing.

“These efforts are continuing in order to seek to preserve jobs and protect learners.

“Whilst this is on-going the directors have taken steps to protect the company through an administration process.”

The statement follows on from an email Elmfield sent to their employees stating that its necessary to “take steps to put the company into administration.”

The email seen by FE Week, which was issued late last night (Thursday 24 October) also informs staff that Elmfield Training Ltd “cannot presently process salaries.”

The email, signed off by “the executive team” said: “As you know, Elmfield has faced a number of very difficult challenges in the past few weeks. We have been working incredibly hard with our major stakeholders to try and put the business on a sounder footing.

“Despite these efforts we have failed to reach a conclusion so far and as a result cannot presently process salaries.”

The email goes on to add that the executive team “will continue to work with stakeholders and potential buyers over the weekend and into next week and will try our hardest to preserve jobs, get the salaries paid and protect our learners. However we can’t be certain that we will be successful and while this process goes on it is necessary that we take steps to put the company into administration.”

This development comes after last week’s news that former Elmfield director Ged Syddall and a representative from the Skills Funding Agency look set for a “no-holds-barred” grilling by MPs over allegations of apprenticeship malpractice.

Elmfield is contracted to deliver apprenticeships in partnership with Barclays, as previously reported in FE Week, which recently announced it wanted to double its intake to 2,000.

A spokesperson for the bank said it still planned to press ahead with the expansion plans.

He said: “Our commitment to apprenticeships and helping young people into work remains unchanged, including delivering 2,000 quality apprenticeships by 2015.

“We are working closely with the SFA to ensure that our apprentices are not impacted.”

A spokesperson for the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) said: “In cases where a provider enters administration, the agency responds by identifying potential alternative providers. If necessary, we manage the transfer of learners and employers to new providers. We also redistribute funding as effectively and efficiently as possible to ensure that learners and public funds are protected.

“The agency’s priority is to ensure minimal disruption to apprentices, learners and employers and once appointed, we will work with the administrators to ensure that all learners and apprentices are transferred to alternative providers.

“Any concerned learners or apprentices, parents or guardians can contact the agency through a dedicated email address set up for enquiries at elmfield@skillsfundingagency.bis.gov.uk.”

More will follow on developments with Elmfield in the next edition of FE Week.

 

 

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60 Comments

  1. my daughter is one of their employers she has been working lots of over time this month and now to be kicked in the teeth like this is a disgrace how can they sleep at night knowing all their employers are loosing their jobs and salaries.as always the culprits get out by resigning and lose nothing

    • That is true Roy. There are some great people working at Elmfield and as usual it is those that are the last to know. Elmfield has great potential as a provider, it just needs the right people at the top. People that know what they are doing and can take the company to a higher level. They have some fantastic contracts that are healthy and growing, so what will happen to them I do not know. It is pay day today and everyone has been told we will not get paid, so you can imagine how that makes the employees feel, especially when they are the ones that have put in a lot of hard work and believed the company was going to pull through with all the communications they have been sent with positive news all the time. We can only hope someone out there will take over and many people will not lose their jobs.

  2. Many employees from Elmfield will be seeing this email for the first time this morning and wondering what the future holds for them. Elmfield has many, many good points and it is a shame that due to bad leadership or whatever other reason it has come to this. Hopefully there will be a provider or company out there willing to take it over. It has some brilliant contracts and fantastic people working for them at the assessor level. It would be a shame that people only hear the bad points and not know the good things in place that we hoped would help Elmfield rise above the bad.

  3. Dorothy Gale

    As usual the Assessors suffer with this company. No wages paid. Informed on Payday.
    I feel extremely upset for the staff that have worked hard to try and keep this company afloat.
    Elmfield’s business model where it makes money for people at the top whilst treating Assessors and Learners in a substandard way has claimed it’s final victims. The hard working staff and the Learners on Programme, who hopefully will be able to go on and complete proper qualifications that actually demonstrate their worth. I wonder if the SFA investigation had turned up any issues that they are running scared from and that’s why they have pulled the plug. Suppose we will never know.
    My heart goes out to all the staff (except senior management team) This was not your fault.

  4. Feeling really sorry for the staff at Assessor level, I was lucky enough to escape last year. This news does not come as a huge shock and tbh, I saw it coming. best wishes to the assessors and learners at this hard time.

  5. I agree with “Fed up too” I worked for Elmfield until recently. There are some incredibly hard working, commited assessors and programme managers who have a great deal of intergrity and always did thier best for learners and clients, despite the pressures put on them by the bean counters at the top. Elmfield could be truly great company with the right leadership, my thoughts are with my former colleagues!

  6. I see the rats jumped off the sinking ship in recent weeks. Elmfield was by far the worst company I have ever worked for. The problem was Management. The assessors were hardworking, conscientious, if slightly blind to the practices. I worked there a year and never put one completion through. I did this out of protest. I was bullied mercilessly by mini hitlers with a lust for power and personal greed. We were filled with false promises of high bonuses for getting 100,000 learners through a full apprenticeship in a year!!! Yes you read that right. I feel sorry for the unlucky ones that rode out the last cull of staff after the first controversy. I got out in time, and am far better off because of it. Assessor, there are plenty of positions out there for you, don’t panic, you will be fine.

    • I agree with your thoughts Craig. I am lucky I did not work on the account you are talking about and which I believe is the account that has been the cause of most of this trouble. However there are some good accounts in the company and good practice within those accounts, where learners are seen (able to be seen) and they do progress. I have a case load of 45 where as I know some of you on that other account had ridiculously high caseloads, I heard one assessor say he had 250!! I am surprised those poor assessors did not have chronic depression and stress. My learners get seen and progress and complete on time. I have never been promised a bonus and my manager is great. However I do know there has been some really bad practices and pressure from higher above for assessors on other accounts.

      I am lucky to work on a contract that is sub contracted to Elmfield so hopefully another provider will take it over and also the assessors that have worked hard on it to build it up over the last year or so. I think it is a shame that Elmfield will be seen as a really bad company, when it is most certainly the top management and the greed they had which is the true culprit. All the good things about Elmfield will be lost in the fallout from the bad.

      All the directors and top management should be sacked for gross misconduct for bringing the company into disrepute! Then they will not be entitled to any notice or wages in lieu of notice. But as we all know, they will leave with a nice hefty golden handshake at the tax payers expense while the rest of us go to the job centre and do our best to get another job and in the meantime try to pay our bills!

      I agree with ‘Sad’ that Elmfield could be a truly great company with the right leadership. It has great potential and in fact some very good practices in place. It has great assessors, who I wish all the luck in the world and hope it all works out ok for them and that the bad eggs get what they are due…which should be a jail sentence

  7. Shocked

    i worked for Elmfield for nearly 4 years but left last month. It is an absolute joke. Constantly lying to staff about jobs being safe or not telling us anything at all when they knew full well they werent safe. Ged should never of let Gary in to the company. Everyone knew about his shady background.

  8. Disheartened

    I too worked at Elmfield as a Area Program Manager and the pressure we were under to get the completions through were horrendous – some of the senior managers were just bullies and due to the culture and greed of the senior managers you had to put pressure on everyone to get the learners through even though you did not agree with what they were asking people to do. It was always ‘once this target is hit we will go back to ‘proper’ assessing’. You became desensitized to the actual numbers we were working with and although we did our best to make assessors and trainers feel valued it was a losing battle as managers were constantly being questioned by senior managers on what exactly staff were doing each day as in the words of one top manager – ‘they should be completing 8-10 learners a day’ We were threatened with daily phone calls from one of the directors if this didn’t happen to find out what was going on in your team.

  9. I took the redundancy last october as I could see where this company was heading and at least they still had some money then. All the rumours you have heard are true – at one point I had 250 learners on my case load and how we got them to sign up was to tell them that once they had signed up the paperwork, they had completed and achieved their NVQ. Yes, it was a simple as that, everything was pre-mapped and so we didn’t even need to observe the learner, although I observed all of mine. Elmfield signed up a 78 year old on a full apprenticeship, despite him saying he didn’t want to complete anything. I was told that potential learners were not allowed to leave a room until they had completed sign up paperwork. I leavered them to the dismay of the company. There were some great assessors and they spoilt it. I have assessed since but my experiences with Elmfield haunt me and I cannot believe that any other provider, now, is honest. They had more managers than staff and company cars for managers who were office based, yet when they started struggling 12 months ago, they took away the free coffee machine for staff!!!!!!
    The management team are a disgrace and need to show support for the staff they have let down.

    • The watcher

      IF the auditors do their job properly, they’ll find that the reason that so many ludicrously overdue learners have gone unnoticed, is that someone (in a high position of authority) instructed that those learners were disguised as UNFUNDED, just before inspection. Basically, they were hidden from the view of people interested in where the funding was going! This was called the ‘PPED’ list (as I recall). Assessors we’re instructed to complete their qual’s ASAP then, upon completion, the admin department would put them back on the funded list, and the end payment would be claimed.

      THAT alone, should ring major alarm bells!

  10. I interviewed for Elmfield, was succesful, handed my notice in three weeks ago to my current employer and had my last day today, only to discover this. To say I’m gutted is an understatement. I’m more upset that I was offered a job on a sinking ship and gave up stable employment to drown before I even started. It’s disgraceful.

  11. My partners works for this training provider and what they have done is build an empire through dedicated, hard working workforce, skimmed all the dividends out of the business for there own selfish greed (I mean who takes £3m out of a company in dividends whilst running on an OFSTED grade 4). What the thanks is now for this workforce is the company has gone into administration and no salaries are being paid. Even down to the workforces expenses, this makes me feels sick to the core. Where is the loyalty to the workforce, they expect honest from staff, but give nothing in return, what a disguising bunch of people.

  12. Devastating news for the assessors in Elmfield, but as Craig said, there are positions for good assessors out there. We have vacancies in various locations throughout the UK (England, Scotland and Northern Ireland) for good Skills Coaches in customer facing sectors, including, retail, customer service, business and administration, team leading, contact centre, financial services and ICT. These roles will bring together the best of your training and coaching abilities along with innovative assessment. Contact jobs@peratraining.com for more information. In the meantime, best of luck for those looking for something else and hopefully a buyer will turn up.

    • As an aside Kevin. Pera training are just as bad as elmfield in the way they treat their staf. You have just gone through a raft of redundancies, including my missus and her boss. Please don’t try to claim the moral highground and use my name in the same statement. Try looking at yourselves before you lure anyone else to your sham of a company.

  13. Dorothy Gale

    Perhaps it’s now time for Assessors/Trainers and Managers to consider if they have anything that they would like to tell the SFA or the public accounts committee about paperwork that should not have been filled in and short cuts that were taken. The SMT at Elmfield have not been loyal to you.
    I certainly believe there are more than 2 ex assessors out there with information to give. I know this won’t help the situation on the jobs front, but if it stops this sort of thing happening again then it’s a good thing.

    • Dismayed

      I am shocked to hear about all this falsifying of paperwork etc. I have worked at Elmfield for 9 months on a completely different contract to Morrison’s and the contract I worked on was very correct and paperwork and evidence was all completed properly and lawfully. People need to be careful when they talk about Elmfield staff not doing their jobs properly because it is a whole lot bigger than Morrison’s.

      I am sure that other big companies such as Barclays, Wetherspoons, Phones4U,Vodafone, DHL, BHS and many more are assessed and completed correctly. If I am wrong let me know. I work on one of the above contracts and I am happy with the way it is conducted and all the paperwork is without doubt always completed lawfully and the apprenticeship delivered as it should be, with teaching and learning in place. It seems to me that the Morrison’s contract has been the ruin of this company and the greed of the executives thinking they could take on such a massive task with not enough staff.

      It is a shame for the rest of the company and all the good assessors that we will all be tarred with this brush. I am dismayed and disgusted that I have worked for a company with Directors that could lie and cheat for their own ends while the good hard working assessors, verifiers and programme managers of the excellently managed accounts will now suffer. They are utter fools and deserve everything that is coming to them.

      I hope someone out there and I am sure it will happen, will take over those other contracts as they are growing and sure to keep a good company afloat. Shame the idiots at the top could not see that and let their greed get in the way of creating a truly fantastic training company with some brilliant contracts already in place! It makes me really angry!!

      • Morianna

        I have also worked on those contracts, but what you have to understand is they are not “owned” by elmfield, but the companies mentioned. This means there is more control rather than it going straight into Elmfield pockets.

  14. Ged is the person who when telling a third of his staff that they would loose their jobs said “Sorry folks, even I can’t work miracles”. Arrogance. You’re not Richard Branson mate and you never will be.

  15. I have, like many of you guys, worked for a variety of providers and I am sorry to say but this type of shady practice is endemic within certain areas of the Industry, but thankfully every provider is not the same.
    No matter how large the provider within it’s ranks are the cheats and manipulators who give the Industry a bad name, they get away with it because of greed.
    I feel really sorry for the trainers and assessors at Elmfield.

  16. I work for Elmfield. Recently I have completed training courses for corporate clients including Barclays and Nationwide. I mentor, train, develop and up skill people, hold peoples hands and help them live and transform into unique and positive people. Unemployed people that is, most of whom would struggle to enter businesses and careers like these without the training we provide. From my last group of 12 learners, 10 gained employment within 6 weeks of our intervention at Elmfield, ask that team what Elmfield has done for them! This section of Elmfield is Employment Services. I’m a trainer and an assessor and proud of what our Employment Service team achieves, as a whole Elmfield gained a Grade 4-we know that! The team on Employment Services gained observation grades of 1’s and grade 2’s -this is immense progress and where people should focus-we weren’t all part of the Morrisons tragedy!!! This is what and who we are at Elmfield- Greatly passionate people, dedicated to changing lives and empowering others.

    • But the directors at the top are all the same?
      Agreed that different sectors of the same business can work differently, but unfortunately, this will affect you all.
      Its a shame really as the sector you work on is a sector in most need and the rewards are the greatest, but what is done, is done and the brand of Elmfield will suffer from this.
      It did after the “apprentice scandal” documentary, so now its a ticking clock.

    • carolyn

      Yes Nicki you are right. In fact Morrisons is only a small part of what Elmfield is. There are so many good points that don’t make it into the news and we were not all part of this Morrisons tragedy. Unfortunately it is those good things and all of us that have worked hard and honestly with our learners to help them progress and earn their certificates that are going to suffer. It is a crying shame that the good points do not get talked about as much as the bad. But it does not alter the fact that the directors have led us to this destruction and they have not done enough to remedy their mistakes quickly enough…unless they have another agenda up their dirty sleeves

  17. I’ve worked for Elmfield for a number of years both before and after the Morrisons contract and all I can say is that it was a brilliant company to work for with some incredibly passionate and talented people to work with. I mainly worked on non Morrison accounts that delivered some amazing training for its learners by its Assessors and Trainers. A lot as been made of Morrisons in the media but let me tell this was only part of what Elmfield Training did and NOT all of it. You only have to look at pervious Ofsted reports for its sub contracts to know that Elmfield delivered training to a grade 1-2 standard and if you read there latest ofsted report you will see there non Morrisons contracts received grades 1-2. Personally I think this industry hanging of Mr Syddall is unfair and disgusting. Ged is a kind and passionate man who has invested heavily in projects to help the unemployed and dissadvantaged kids in our society and always treated his staff fairly and with respect. It looks to me that Morrisons became disinterested in the apprenticeship programme at some point and let Elmfield and Mr Syddall take the fall.

  18. Not Surprised

    So the rats from the SMT have left the sinking ship, as a previous very disgruntled and bullied employee of this shambolic organisation, could any one care to enlighten all as to who the rats were that have left during the past few weeks, one is off to San Francisco today, Another senior Director, who in their role should be looking out for Employees, said to her have a “Great Time”, how insensitive can you get, placing comments like this on Facebook.

    The activities demonstrated by Elmfield are disgusting to say the least, this money is not Ged’s, as the service he was paid for, did not happen, grow some balls the SFA, get all of the public’s hard earned Tax Money back and pay those poor employees who have slaved there guts off for the company, no wonder that in a lot of Circles, NVQ stands for NO VALUE QUALIFICATION….. on the other hand, if you were knowingly falsifying documentation in order to give people a recognised qualification, but in order to protect your own salary, then personally I would say that you are as much accountable as the idiots running the business, we are all responsible for our actions, in this day and age Whistle Blowing is encouraged, nobody forced you to do this, morally I wouldnt, by doing this the ship has sunk, so if you were a thief whose made a good living out of this, don’t moan now that your dishonest income has come to an end, the people who have real issue are the majority of good honest people who work at Elmfield who are now going to suffer……….

  19. Disillusioned

    I started with Elmfield as an assessor 3 weeks ago so was looking forward to receiving my first pay cheque yesterday after viewing it online on Wednesday. Imagine my shock and disgust when I opened up my emails on Friday morning. I feel betrayed and very gullible that I believed all the positive hype from the managers and directors who spoke to us at our induction. They definitely knew something was happening so why keep recruiting. You should be ashamed of yourselves and I hope for everyones sake things get resolved and the people who have been working hard for the last month get the pay owed to them and jobs are secured.

  20. Onecompany

    Sick to death of reading these comments off other members of Elmfield’s staff bashing the Morrisons assessors! I previously worked on the contract from day one untill last year when all of the trouble started and I never made up seeing learners or made them sign things that they did not understand! I worked solidly for 2 1/2 years to help my learners may of them who struggled with maths and English to the required standard! The teams on the Morrisons contract are the nicest people you will ever meet, so I annoyed that the other assessors at elmfield are trying to accuse them of being the reason that these problems have started. No the reason for these problems are the senior management team and the fact that they have £ signs in their eyes and their sights where set on making big bucks for themselves and not caring who they s**t on in the process! Fingers crossed that a buyer is found to save jobs but a mass clear out needs to occur in management.

    • carolyn

      I don’t think anyone is blaming all the assessors who worked on Morrisons contract. I think the contract got too big to handle and there were a lot of unfunded learners to begin with. It just got out of hand and with caseloads of up to 250 who could possibly do their job properly? That is a disgrace in itself, putting assessors in that situation and causing no doubt endless stress to them. Everyone at Elmfield knows that it should be an amazing company and that there are amazing people that work there…on all the contracts. But it is the management at fault here and we all know that. You are obviously a very loyal man “Brian”, but I am sorry, your loyalties are a little displaced on this occasion and we all know that Ged and the rest of his cronies are not worrying themselves sick about how to pay their mortgage this month…their houses are all paid off with tax payers money!!!

  21. Onecompany

    The whole problem started with the 100,000 figure, how is it physically possible
    to deliver so many quals in just a small space of time!! The first time I ever saw all management in the same room was when we got told that redundancies where being made! Too many cooks spoil the broth springs to mind,.too many people wanting a slice of the pie and wanting a company car to take them back to their mansions!

  22. A coincidence maybe, but I remember sitting in a darkened room at Carter and Carter and the magic 100,000 learners was mentioned then, it didn’t do them any good either, did it ?

  23. Dorothy Gale

    If you worked on the Morrisons contract for any length of time then you know what was wrong. the 100,000 learners were an absolute shambles. You have learners that have a qualification who did absolutely nothing to achieve it other than sign paperwork. That is not a QCF in Retail. the qualification should not be sold as “you don’t have to do anything” which i heard on numerous occasions. I had stand up rows with my Team leader and Area Manager about the targets that we had to complete and the quality and all that happened was that i was threatened with a development plan. I know of 2 so called Senior account managers who after the first lot of redundancies all they could talk about was what company car they would get and how it would be a smaller or worse car than they had before. One of these people has since recently left. No doubt aware of what was unfolding. When i talk to people who are inside the organisation I get astonishment as to how this could have happened. REALLY !!! sit down, have a quiet moment and think ! All hasn’t been well at Elmfield for some time. If you are honestly saying that you are stunned and shocked that this has happened you must have been locked in a cupboard for the last 18 months. I think the Junior Management team of Area Managers and Account Managers need to have a long, hard look at themselves. You know who you are.

  24. Righteousness

    Adding on to your comment ‘Not Surprised’ I worked the Morrison’s contract along with a couple of other contracts, and I can say that they were not as great as you think. I spoke to learners on different contracts that hadn’t been seen since their induction which was 9 months previously, and had no contact with anyone. So blaming Morrison’s assessors is a pretty self absorbed attitude to have . As assessors we work to the NVQ code of conduct unless we don’t understand what it is we’re doing which was the case with some.
    There are those of us who didn’t falsify paperwork, that observed all learners, and listened to what the learner wanted. So any list that came out with people being made to do Key skills etc I completed their NVQ with them and completed the leaver form.
    As someone that cares about the job that I do, I say wind your neck in because whatever you think you’re in the same ship as the rest of us at Elmfield.

  25. Dorothy Gale

    You say you did their QCF and leavered them. There is the problem. There was no funding for QCF only Just apps. So by signing them up for App and leavering them you were breaking the rules. Thats the point.
    I’m not saying all assessors did this. But a lot did.
    Read the 50+ comments above. They can’t be making this up. And like i say i argued about it and got told to do it or be on a development plan.
    Don’t defend the indefensible.
    I did try to leave, but i found that once id worked for Elmfield it was very hard to get another Job.

  26. Onecompany

    I have previously worked for Elmfield and didn’t find it hard to get another job, if you are a good assessor new employers will see this. Fingers crossed for my friends who are still at Elmfield there will be a happy ending, either a buyer will be found or they gain new employment.

  27. how do I pay my bills

    I’ve been with elmfield and seen it all to be honest, and the morrisons contract has seen good and poor practice as do other accounts but they see more good and poor practice isnt then usially down toanagement asking for it, also morrisons saw the worst. Management have made some bad decisions and few people stood up to them when it filtered down for fear of loosing their job. Morrisons has been elmfields downfall as it was poorly managed by the start of the downfall which has been the highly paid employment of friends and family that quiet frankly haven’t had a clue and have just been taking the p and the money and package with it. There has been good and not so good people at all levels just as im sure there is in most companies. Elmfields problem has been not dealinh with the bad and letting morrisons become the beast it was, but now their is some good stuff happening thats is chanhong young people’s lives and those involved know that amd nobody can take away what they’ve supported those learnes in achieving.

  28. Peter Cobrin

    This last comment is the most honest I’ve seen and the first to make any mention of young people and their prospects. The honesty also extends to describing Morrisons as the “beast it was”. I sincerely hope that their part in this sorry tale, and the funding they received is fully exposed. I’m now off to Tesco before the gales start, and I also have a small bet to place…………….

  29. Righteousness

    Dorothy Gale, did I say that I signed them up to the full apprenticeship, don’t assume what you don’t know. I never signed anyone up to the full qualification that didn’t want to be. They were changed at the top. So not my fault really was it??? I just carried on completing what they wanted to complete and nothing more.So again those slating Morrison’s assessors and throwing blame like children, wind your necks in and get your facts straight.

  30. I work for Elmfield and had previously worked for two other training companies and to be honest nothing I have seen has been different too the other training companies. The issue is that when people can make big profits out of this sort of thing people get very greedy and when you see numbers like 100000 learners we all know that learners are not getting the journey they deserve ! I am based in scotland with Elmfield ( not very long may I add) and the work we have completed has all been of a great standard but some of the stories I was hearing had shocked me ! The government need to have a long hard look at this industry, because when people can make all this money the only person that suffers is the learner ! I think all Elmfield staff should set up a premium 0800 number and use their mobile phones to call it until the money they are owed has been generated 🙂

  31. Dorothy Gale

    We will see what people did and didn’t know. It has no option but to all come out now. SO if like you say Righteousness you did everything ok, then you have nothing to worry about.
    I go back to the comments above from other people. Nobody is blaming Assessors. But if it smells wrong, then it generally is wrong.
    and to tell people they are not getting paid at 10pm the night before payday is unforgivable.

  32. Disgusted

    The mistake would be to think that Elmfield is the only one. Panorama only scratched the surface. There are no real apprenticeships, this sorry episode was about making Morrisons look good, enabling the government to shout about the number of apprenticeships under their watch and of course lots of money for Elmfield. All these funds should be re-directed to provide real apprenticeships for unemployed young people.

  33. This story has been running for two years, it is astounding that the SFA didn’t get off their butts and talk to “apprentices”. Delivering box ticking to people already in employment that they don’t want to do is not an apprenticeship. The true scale of this type of delivery should be exposed for what it is.
    Once again this will be swept under the carpet by the SFA. A large alternate provider like Intraining will ” pick up learners” and BIS will keep on about the record number of Apprenticeships.
    I feel sorry for the assessors and genuine apprentices caught up in this.
    The SFA should focus on the quality of delivery not the scale.

  34. I am sorry to hear what has happened. I know that there isn’t a good time but two pay days before Christmas is bad. We have some self-employed vacancies for assessors available nationally. If you are interested please send your CV to neil@northwestcollege.co.uk putting Elmfield in the subject line and I will contact you shortly to discuss offering/finding you some work, even if only temporary at this stage.

    • This is great news to hear and I hope more providers will see the staff at ground level, the ones sweating and toiling all hours to give learners the best opportunity to achieve, some credit because they are Elmfield. The decent, hard working part. The part I wanted to join and make stronger. What a shame a few have spoiled it for the many who truly believed in the service they were providing.

  35. Assessors Wife

    I’ve read enough of these comments now, some people blaming the assessors (why?!) I agree with the majority the downfall to this place was the management. My husband works for this company but on a different contract (one that worked exactly as it should, however, stop blaming the assessors on the morrisons contract). We are now left on one wage which when all is paid out leaves us £50 to cover our food shopping. The losers here are the assessors and those just above them. The likelihood of 600+ workers all getting jobs will be slim regardless how good you are at your job, these same people are owed money that they rightfully earned, now instead the fat cats will sit for the next few months not worrying about christmas whilst the rest of us have to cancel it. I just hope for the sake of those still left waiting that a buyer does come along – sees the company for its genuine contracts and takes it from from there. Blaming the assessors is unfair. Rant over.

  36. Peter Cobrin

    So the new regime will put funding in the hand of the employers. Hmmm….. some I would trust totally,others, and one “leading supermarket” comes to mind, no way!!!

    Given the abject failure of the SFA to provide consistent standards of monitoring and policing of the present regime, who will police the new regime. And as I have asked before: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who will police the enforcers when they fail, as they always do?

    All employers, colleges and training providers (the bulk of them) want is consistency, stability and honesty from government and administration. What have they had? U-turns, goalposts moved mid-contract, frequent changes in personnel, obfuscation and political opportunism.

  37. Florenz Geraghty

    A past employee & friend of existing employees.

    An absolute disgrace.

    How can a company tell it’s employees it is not paying them on the eve of all of their mortgages & bills being paid, for them all then to be liable to pay overdraft charges as well as everything else.

    This company has taken thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of tax payers money & now it has left all of it’s employees in the same situation that it was supposed to be helping people get out off.
    Unemployment.

    I know from experience how much money they have claimed from the government.

    Surely the government has some sort of leverage & can encourage the benefactors of the business (who have reaped the benefits from the tax payer) to pay & look after the employees of this business who have done excellent work with some of the most needy people in our society.

    Excellent work that cannot be denied!

    The people that work for this company care & are passionate about the work they do & the people that have benefited from meeting & coming into contact with these people are so grateful & in such a better place due to their intervention.

    There has to be some sort of justice for these employees! There has to be. Please.

    Also how can an organisation like this just disappear?

    The work that it does is absolutely necessary to ensure people who need the help, get it from people who genuinely care!

    If I had the money I’d buy the business, it works & has some of the most amazing people working for it that I have ever known & there is a serious need for a company like this in our region.

  38. ex employee

    Ex Employee

    It’s an absolute disgrace how the employees have been treated by Elmfield – but not surprising! However serious questions must be asked of the government organisations. How effective was the SFA in monitoring and protecting a contract worth millions of pounds of taxpayers money.
    Why was Elmfields’ own contract only inspected by Ofsted (or previously ALI),12 months after completing supposedly 100,000 apprentices for Morrisons and claiming millions of pounds.
    My heart goes out to all my ex colleagues and hope that a solution can be found very quickly.

  39. Well it takes time to find a new job and is difficult when the name “elmfield”is your last employer. colleagues have or are just about to miss their mortgage payments as elmfield have broken their contract with their hardworking employees. Still employed at the minute, which makes matters worse leaving us all in limbo. Come on administrators or whoever is running our lives at the minute, payup or make us redundant so we can at least fill some forms in and move on. Anyone know a company running an unemployed and back into work scheme?????