Leicester training firm rescues stricken Learndirect

A Leicester-based company has sealed a deal to buy troubled Learndirect – Britain’s biggest provider of apprenticeships and training services.

Dimensions Training Solutions, based in Pegasus House in Leicester, will take over Learndirect in a deal which will save 1,000 jobs – including that at its Colton Square premises in the city.

LearnDirect, which is owned by private equity firm LDC, has been close to collapse since last summer and has been warned that funding from the Department of Education will disappear from July.

Last July Learndirect said it would keep its support centre in Leicester open despite its chief executive admitting that one in ten of its staff are facing redundancy.

The firm, which moved to Colton Square in Leicester in 2010 and created around 250 jobs, provides training services for the D2N2 LEP, but had been rocked by a damning Ofsted report, which called the £171m-turnover company “inadequate”.

According to Sky News, LDC has been keen to offload the company while it is still trading, and had been in talks with Nottingham-based recruitment and training giant Staffline up until last week.

DTS is run by chief executive Wayne Janse Van Rensburg and managing director Lucy Townsley. The company’s website reads: “We have built our business on good people and innovative technology. Our OFSTED rating of GOOD reflects our continuing commitment to offering learning opportunities of the highest quality.”

Speaking to FE Week, Wayne Janse van Rensburg said: “The acquisition of Learndirect has protected the future of the Learndirect group and its learners and apprentices.

“We have the building blocks through which to deliver a service of the highest quality and respond to the ever changing face of the skills and apprenticeship market.

The LDA brand will remain, as it is well respected by our employers and recognised as the brand of the largest dedicated provider of levy apprenticeships in the country.”

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