Halton Housing Trust Chief Executive Nick Atkin rolled up his sleeves to work alongside plumbers as part of a national campaign to promote apprenticeships, spending  the afternoon with the Trust’s maintenance and repairs team to support National Apprenticeship Week.

 Nick was put through his paces by plumber Ste Bounds, who started his career as an apprentice with the Trust over six years ago, and Mike Corrigan, an apprentice plumber who has just joined the Trust.

 Mike was in the third year of his apprenticeship when his former employer went into receivership and was offered the chance to complete his training with the Trust.

 Nick joined them on various repairs jobs and spent most of his afternoon fixing flushes and leaks on a variety of toilets! He also got to grips with the hand held PDA devices that the repairs team use to log their work and receive all their work.  He also provided a live update throughout the afternoon on Twitter.

 He said: “It has been really full-on, going from one job to the next. I have learnt so much in one afternoon but I’m still not sure I would trust my plumbing skills unsupervised!

 “Having an opportunity to get stuck in, meet a cross section of people and experience what we do reminds you about the difference we are making, to both our customers and our apprentices.  This is what makes working in housing different to so many other careers.”

 There are12 apprentices currently working with the Trust across various departments – accounting for five per cent of its workforce.

 The Trust is working withRiversideCollegethroughout the week, including an open evening on Monday where local employers were invited to talk to students about the advantages of an apprenticeship.

 They are also sponsoring RiversideCollege’s apprenticeship awards. Mike Wilson, an apprentice with the Trust who has now gained full time employment with them, will be attending along with other staff members.

 Mike has also been through the college’s apprenticeship programme and will appear in a film at the awards on Thursday talking about his experiences.

 The week will end with a special presentation where all the Trust’s apprentices will receive tool kits.

 Nick added: “If you don’t provide these opportunities where is the next generation of professional skilled people going to come from?

 “Especially in the current climate with youth unemployment now over one million and changes to the education system, these schemes are more important than ever before to help young people gain skills and a career.

 “We are absolutely committed to providing apprenticeships and I would encourage other organisations to consider offering these opportunities.”

 National Apprenticeship Week, from 10^th February, aims to show employers the advantages of employing apprentices, to highlight the range of apprenticeships available and to promote the skills of apprentices to employers and the wider public.

Over a hundread Halton Construction/ Hair/ Beauty/PSDstudent urgently need you to show your support. www.powerinpartnership.co.uk are busting at the seems on the ground floor of the Old Boat House in Runcorn Old Town.

They have asked for BtGG help to support them renovate the first floor of the building so they can extend their services and engage with young people that are not in any form of education, employment or learning.

If sucessful the students themselves will be completing the renovations as part of their hands on construction training.

To show your support you can either ‘LIKE’ the project via www.facebook.com/beyondthegardengate and/or use our voting function on our website.

The community surrounding Crow Wood park have got together with BtGG to raise funding for an innovative outdoor football snooker game. Sounds Bizzare but its very brilliant!

For more information please see http://www.playinnovation.co.uk/

With your support this will be the first of its kind in the Northwest

Its simple, to show your support you can ‘LIKE’ the project on our facebook page www.facebook.com/beyondthegardengate and/or you can use our quick vote poll on our homepage!

A hundred Construction learners in Halton are asking for your support to help fund the safety equipment they need to complete their Construction Course and work on community projects in Halton.

Funding is available via Beyond the Garden Gate but we need to know the community supports the campaign. You can show your support by accessing our www.facebook.com/beyondthegardengate facebook page and/or by accessing our quick poll on our home page.

Exciting plans have been put forward by St Bede’s Catholic Junior School to build an outside classroom facility that will be shared with the surrounding community.  As an added benifit the school is hoping that the facility can be built by Joinery student wishing to use the project for their final examinations due summer 2012 (saving a whooping 10K!!)

The Classroom will be the first of its kind and will be used to facilitate outside classroom activities, music practice, collective worship, drama and art projects to name a few!

The first of its kind

EIGHT apprentices have started the training they hope will give them the skills to succeed in life.

They have been successful in being offered an apprenticeship – which will last up to four years – with Halton Housing Trust. They will learn from experienced employees and tradesmen as well as attend college training courses.
“We have made a commitment to supporting training and employment opportunities for local people and this is part of that work,” said Sue Baxendale, the Trust’s Director of Human Resources and Organisational Development.
“There is a great deal of satisfaction in giving these young people the tools they need to succeed in life.”
Halton Housing Trust is working in partnership with Riverside College in order to provide full training and qualifications for the apprentices.
The Trust is investing £40million in neighbourhoods across Runcorn and Widnes as part of the Beyond the Garden Gate programme over the next five years and has agreed with contractors that they will also create training, employment and work experience opportunities for local people.

Check out our video on You Tube!

Do you know someone, or a group of people in your local community who would benefit from a good deed before Christmas? Find out more by clicking on the images below. You can also call Lesley Keeble on 0151 423 4752 or email lesleykeeble@theapollogroup.co.uk to find out more.

The BtGG Team are here, there and everywhere talking to you about what you would like to see your community budget spent on. We can appreciate that not everyone has the time to come to our Neighbourhood Natter sessions so we have developed our very own Facebook page.  To be Facebook Fabulous we need as many of you as possible to hit the ‘like’ button as possible so please show your support and join our extended online community!

You can access it via this website by clicking the Facebook icon on the home page.

Staff at Halton Community Radio have been working hard to promote the Beyond the Garden Gate programme, so much so Apollo, one of the contractors helping to deliver all the projects has donated £250!

 As well as promoting all of our Neighbourhood Natter events they recently they helped us to promote an employment recruitment day held at the Stobard Stadium with over 200 local Widnes and Runcorn resident attendees.

Linda Crosby, Community Investment Manager said “we would like to thank HCR for all their help and support and its a pleasure to be able to present them with this cheque”