SME Business News

Funds of £115million, set aside by the government to help SMEs with staff training, has now been transferred to other budgets because of the lack of take up by small companies.

The money has been taken from the governments Train To Gain programme and switched to education and other training schemes, skills minister John Denham revealed.

“We have still not persuaded every employer of the importance of skills. The message has not reached every workplace or every person who could benefit. A third of employers still don’t train their staff. In other organisations, training does not involve everyone.”

“The employers who do not train run real risks with their businesses. Public services who do not train will struggle to provide the quality of service that the taxpayer expects.”

Despite the full allocation of funds not being used, the governments budget for the Train To Gain scheme will curiously rise to £1billion in 2010/11.

The problem for me is that the government is not doing a great job of getting the message across to SMEs. The recent proposals to put all business schemes under one umbrella cannot come to soon, until then how many of us are ignoring government financial help because we do not know it exists?