Historically, colleges of Further Education have been the guardians of funded training delivery. Now, however, there is a plethora of small, agile, and flexible commercial firms among the Train to Gain contractors.

Fiona Hudson-Kelly, is the founder of Funded Training Made Easy, an independent company providing commercial tools for more effective Train to Gain contract delivery. She is inundated with pleas for help from new Train to Gain training providers after every article she writes or talk that she gives on the subject of being a successful Train to Gain provider.

Fiona explains, "Commercial training providers are great at delivering innovative learning programmes that capture the imagination of employers. They are also brilliant at giving customers what they want because they have to be, or they wouldn't thrive in today's globally competitive commercial environment."

"Train to Gain has been marketed so successfully that small, commercial training providers' customers demanded that the commercial sector be allowed to compete and offer funded training programmes where appropriate. This has often been the catalyst for training providers to seek approval from the Learning and Skills Council to be given Train to Gain contracts".

Fiona elaborates further that the problem this has created is that unless the new Train to Gain providers are adequately supported, they will not understand the pitfalls associated with the programme requirements and thus risk not being able to fulfill their contractual obligations.

A classic example of this is when a new provider doesn't have adequate management controls in place to track inaccurate or missing candidate data and doesn't realise that this missing data can result in withholding of vital payments. In a worst-case scenario, failure to meet programme requirements can even result in a demand for reimbursement of paid-out funding at the audit stage!