Buy-out secures jobs and training
Eighty jobs and hundreds of apprenticeships have been secured after a training provider with a base in the Black Country was bought out.
First4Skills, which went into administration earlier this week, employs more than 526 people across the country and has offices in Trafalgar House, King Street, Dudley.
Liverpool Community College, which has 17,000 students, has completed a deal to acquire the majority of the company's business and assets.
The takeover of First4Skills will see the college become one of the country's biggest providers of apprentice training, as it will be responsible for the training of more than 10,000 apprentices in total.
The deal has been struck just weeks after Wolverhampton-based training firm JML Dolman went into liquidation.
First4Skills provides apprenticeships in sectors including business, hospitality, social care, warehouse work and customer service.
Firms including New Look, Primark, Maplin, Currys and PC World taken on apprentices trained there. The jobs saved at the Dudley base include trainers and office staff.
"This is fantastic news for Liverpool and for the college," said college principal Elaine Bowker.
"As well as safeguarding the jobs of First4Skills's people, it brings together the best practice of the public sector and the resources of the private sector to create an organisation which will be a market leader in apprenticeship training."
