Training business marks milestone with £4m HQ investment
A training business which has been operating for 50 years is to mark its golden anniversary by investing nearly £4m in a new head office and workshop.
Humberside Engineering Training Association (HETA) expects to move by Easter 2018 to premises in Dansom Lane South in Hull, previously occupied by the Eltherington Group.
Iain Elliott, chief executive of HETA, said the new home will provide the organisation with nearly 34,000 sq ft of space to increase numbers of apprentices and adult learners and to improve services to employers.
He said: “We are embarking on this exciting project because we are committed to improving our services to employers and to our learners and to making a significant contribution to raising skills across the Humber region.
“The business has grown over the last 50 years and we need to be able to continue to offer different types of provision, such as renewables, in addition to traditional industry. We also offer higher education qualifications now and we are doing a lot more adult courses than we used to, upskilling people to meet the needs of employers across the region.”
HETA moved to its current, purpose-built site in Copenhagen Road in 1978. It also owns a centre at Foxhills, Scunthorpe, which opened in 2014 and it leases a third site at CATCH in Stallingborough.
Hull accommodates more than half of HETA’s 200 first-year apprentices, who make up a total of 650 working at the company’s centres and with employers, which now number 300.
Elliott said: “Copenhagen Road is not big enough for what we want to do and the new site will give us twice as much space. Our priorities were size and the ability to convert the premises to meet our needs with relative ease.”
Work will start this summer on refurbishment of the existing office and workshop space and construction of new classrooms, IT space and additional workshop areas as well as welfare facilities including a restaurant.
Elliott added: “The project will cost around £3.9m for the acquisition and the refurbishment and we are in discussions with contractors now.
“The UK needs to recruit more engineers and the Humber region is no exception to that. We have been training them for more than 50 years and we have a successful model that gives young people the technical skills that they need and that gets them ready for the world of work. The new site will provide a much more enhanced and realistic workplace environment.”
Dave Garness, managing director of Garness Jones, said: “It is a well-established industrial site and we identified it as a property which would be a great fit for HETA. We wish HETA every success in building on what is already a very successful business and hope the new premises deliver everything they need and expect.”
HETA has agreed an initial funding package with Santander Corporate & Commercial to seal the acquisition. Humber law firm Bridge McFarland Solicitors acted for HETA.
