South west council
Letter from the South West Council - Withdrawal from Trading Standards, Animal Health and Welfare and Legal and Enforcement Training Provision.
TSI has recently been informed that the South West Council will now no longer deliver Trading Standards training. This obviously is a great loss to the delivery of such professional training.
TSI has had many discussions recently with its accredited training providers and the overwhelming consensus is that because of insufficient candidates attending advertised courses, courses are being postponed and therefore it is getting more difficult for all the training providers to invest in providing future training. This is a disadvantage to all, the candidate, their local authority and the training provider.
TSI wants to assure its members that it will do everything it can to ensure a continued service of Trading Standards training. In the efforts made so far, TSI has been involved and will continue to be involved in discussions about this issue at the Regional Heads of Service meetings. It recently provided a paper on this issue to the LACORS Trading Standards Policy Forum (TSPF) and has asked that this subject be discussed in more detail at the next TSPF meeting to deliver answers to this situation. TSI will want to make sure it is covering all the issues and that it has the full support of the regions in its delivery of training.
As you can also read from the weekly highlights diary, a meeting took place this week between the Lead Officer Group for Education and Training and the Accredited University training providers to discuss the way forward to ensure future Trading Standards training provision. Various options were discussed and will be implemented in the next round of accreditation to take place later on this year.
TSI will also be contacting over the next few weeks its other accredited training providers to see how by working together this short fall in training provision can be managed.
On that theme, TSI has other accredited training providers listed on the TSI website for authorities to turn to for their employees qualifications and CPD training. Please use this link to view a list of course providers (PDF 89KB) and the subjects they deliver.
