Procurement body Fusion 21 will invest £400,000 in the training project it set up once part of the scheme’s grant funding ends.

Fusion 21 Skills, which trains unemployed local people to take up jobs in the construction industry, was backed by the European Social Fund and Ambition: Construction, a fund set up by the government in 2001 to get 1000 people on New Deal programmes into skilled jobs in the industry.

But the Ambition: Construction fund will end in June and Fusion 21 will put its own money into the project until alternative sources are found. Fusion 21’s managing director

Dave Neilson told Housing Today’s efficiency conference: “We’ve had to put in funding to continue delivery.”

A spokesman for Fusion 21 added that it was always aware the Ambition: Construction funding would come to an end.

Source

Housing Today