This morning’s Western Mail reveals that the Assembly Government’s flagship anti-redundancy programme ProAct has only managed to spend £5.5m of its £48m budget as of November last year. This was despite growing unemployment in Wales.
The ProAct scheme is designed to help viable businesses cope with the downturn and prepare for the recovery by giving staff – who otherwise might be made redundant – the opportunity to gain new skills during quiet periods.
It offers training costs of up to £2,000 per individual and a wage subsidy of up to £50 a day per worker when they are gaining new skills. But figures published following a Freedom of Information request reveal that as of November just 144 companies had their training applications approved and have been awarded funding. A total of 7,287 people were understood to be benefiting from training.
Russell Lawson of the Federation of Small Businesses said there were widespread frustrations with ProAct.
He said: “I think this typifies the problem with money for training in Wales. If you are applying for any kind of training grants you have to apply for them in education-speak. This is the frustration businesses feel when they are trying to jump though the right hoops and use the right words.”
Calling for a focus on “business reality”, he said: “There are 150,000 businesses in Wales so as much as they herald it, you have to question what significant impact it’s having on all businesses in Wales.”
Welsh Liberal Democrat economy spokeswoman Jenny Randerson was alarmed by the figures and described the programme as a “red herring”.
“This information confirms our concern that the ProAct scheme is not the economic magic bullet the Labour-Plaid coalition keep telling us it is,” she said. “The Government say thousands of jobs have been saved but these figures suggest that just £750 has been spent on each person receiving support – no more than two days of typical training.”
“It is hard to believe that this small sum of financial support could make the difference between a job kept or lost.”
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