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University welcomes the launch of new national business engagement network

The Training Gateway, which has won a Strategic Development Fund grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), connects the business community to every UK university to enable them to procure high quality corporate and professional training such as that available from the University of Kent.

Carole Barron said: 'The Training Gateway is innovative and effective. It opens up opportunities for the University to promote its high quality professional training to businesses, as well as its professional consultancy, collaborative research, access to high quality facilities and highly skilled students. I am extremely pleased that we are a partner in this initiative.'

The Training Gateway has already started distributing tenders and has taken requests from as far afield as Dubai and Brazil for training programmes for a wide variety of staff, including senior public sector managers, oil exploration engineers and air traffic controllers.

Amanda Selvaratnam, CEO of The Training Gateway, said: 'We're delighted the network has proved so successful. UK universities currently account for only around 5% of the UK's total training spend of £33 billion. We recognise that it's about time UK industry profited from the extremely high standard of education and training for businesses that our university system has to offer.'

Lord Sainsbury, former Science and Innovation Minister, and Peter Luff MP, chairman of the Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, will host the launch of The Training Gateway.

Contact: mediaoffice@kent.ac.uk

Story published at 1:20pm 24 April 2008