Plumpton College launches three new retraining courses

The courses, Entry into Viticulture, Entry into Horticulture and Entry into Agriculture’ are designed to help employers with their immediate workforce requirements by providing potential employees with the necessary sector specific skills, the college said.

The Entry into re-training programmes will be one-week intensive courses designed to provide job seekers and career changers with relevant qualifications and introductory knowledge, sector engagement and a guaranteed interview from a recruiting industry employer.

Principal of Plumpton College, Jeremy Kerswell said: “Recent studies found that Brighton alone is expecting 30,000 plus redundancies in the catering and hospitality sector and Crawley has the second highest rate of furlough in the country, with this in mind Plumpton’s response to the current challenges in the jobs market is to launch our re-training programmes.

“As a leading land-based college, Plumpton have developed programmes specifically to meet the needs of the sector and local employment opportunities.

“We have worked closely with local economic partnerships, land-based sector bodies and the Department of Work and Pension to ensure the programmes meet the identified local economic and skills priorities.

“If you’re a business with immediate staffing requirements this is a programme for producers to get involved with.”

The college successfully launched its pilot programme Entry into Viticulture at the beginning of September.

The UK Wine Industry has experienced exceptional growth, and in the last two years alone, employment in this sector has grown by 35 per cent, the college said. In 2019 more than 3.2million vines were planted compared to 1million in 2017, and total bottle sales of UK produced wine is predicted to reach more than 40 million by 2040, representing over £1billion in revenue.

Andrea Nixon, one of the students on the Entry into Viticulture course said: “I feel fate has brought me here, to this wonderful place, I feel privileged to be here and I have totally embraced it!

“It has been very intensive but very rewarding!”.

Another student, Kevin Whiting, added: “This has been a fantastic grounding, I feel so much more confident walking out to a vineyard now with a much better knowledge base.”

At the end of the week, all 12 members of the first cohort completed the programme and several members have already secured employment, the college said.