Innovative centre in West Yorkshire wins LCL Awards Gas Centre 2024 award
23 Aug 2024
Brookhouse Training Centre (BTC) is the winner of our Gas Centre Award 2024. Chris Hayton, the centre’s Operations Manager, and his colleague Tim Hughes, who is responsible for student enrolment, both attended our awards ceremony at the Hilton, Leicester on the 4th July.
Chris took his first gas assessment back in 1998 and worked in gas maintenance before taking his tutoring qualifications and working as an Assessor and Internal Verifier. He joined Brookhouse in 2011 and has been responsible for the development of the centre’s MLP. He was both thrilled and surprised to have won, “We’ve only been with LCL Award for three years, so we really weren’t expecting to win!”
Going the extra mile
Brookhouse has been training and assessing candidates in the domestic gas industry since 2010. The centre was set up to plug a gap in the market. Chris explains:
"At the time, we could see lots of our competitors provided good gas training, but they didn’t include a work placement to help students gain the necessary onsite experience and portfolio evidence they need to sit their ACS qualifications.
"From the start we’ve given all the learners on our MLP a written guarantee of a work placement which means we can confidently send them out with the necessary skills and knowledge to be employable in the industry. Basically, we’ve taken the standard core gas safety syllabus and added another 50% to its content, which as far as I know makes us unique!
“The guaranteed work placement is our USP and it’s worked! Since 2010 we have successfully trained over 1800 new candidates and successfully reassessed 600 existing Gas Engineers. We’re based in West Yorkshire, but our learners come from all over the UK, as far away as Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. Over the year's we’ve built up an amazing network that we can draw upon today, with many of our learners undertaking work experience with engineers we trained back in the day.
“One of Tim’s roles is to maintain this sense of connection and to set up the work placements for all our learners. Typically, they spend eight weeks in centre, then have a work placement to meet the IGEM standard - a minimum of 18 weeks – before they come back to us for a two week refresher and sit their ACS. It works well. 70% of our learners walk straight into work.”
It was this workplace aspect of Brookhouse’s training provision that particularly impressed our team of judges: Stewart Clements of HHIC, Brett Forster of NAPIT, Hattie Hassan MBE of Stopcocks and Charlotte Lee of the HCA.
The centre works hard to instil core skills:
“We have developed an ‘Introduction to Gas’ to our Multi-Skilled Gas Engineer MLP programme to ensure that candidates’ pipework skills and knowledge of systems and regulations are sufficient to tackle the everyday tasks and problems they’ll encounter working in the plumbing industry. In addition to delivering best practice in all aspects of core gas safety and safe isolation, we have also developed a state-of-the-art fault-finding area. Here students strip down dead boilers, identify the components, and then refit and rebuild them as per manufacturer’s instructions.
“After this, coupled with our own fault-finding acronym and flow diagrams, students progress onto fault-finding and repairing live boilers with pre-set faults. Prior to undertaking a managed work placement, students are then introduced to our chronological ‘through the ages’ 6-bay central heating area, ranging from historical G-rated heating systems through to A-rated high-efficiency systems, so that nothing they face in the real world will phase them. We believe these extra skills and knowledge set our students apart from other candidates – gives them the edge.
“As a member of Energy & Utility Skills’ Gas Industry Liaison Group, Brookhouse has been involved in devising the Standards of Training in Gas Work (IGEM/IG/1) document, which was initially published in 2014. Our training programme has been used as a benchmark for the new standards of training. We were subsequently the first and only training provider in the UK to achieve Gold Provider Status on the Energy & Utilities Independent Assessment Service (EUIAS) for a domestic gas Managed Learning Programme.
Learning for all
“In November 2020, Brookhouse signed the Armed Forces Covenant to pledge our support to serving military personnel and veterans. These days between forty and fifty percent of our learners are ex-military and after being granted Enhanced Learning Credit status in 2020, we have successfully trained 95 service leavers into exciting new careers in the domestic gas sector. Combined with our high level of training, the skills and values service leavers have acquired throughout their military service, has produced some of the best new entrant candidates the training industry has to offer.”
"I feel very proud that our efforts have been recognised and was very pleased to be a part of the first Awards evening. The whole event was excellent. A great social - with the chance to meet everyone at LCL as well as the other centres. It was interesting to see what other centres are doing.
"I’m particularly interested to find out more about the Inclusivity Charter. We’re looking to employ a female trainer at the moment and have trained eight women this year alone. We encourage learners from all races, backgrounds and cultures, so it’s great to hear that LCL has this initiative to recognise centres that are working hard to be diverse and inclusive.”
To find out more about Brookhouse, please click here.
Brookhouse Training Centre (BTC) is the winner of our Gas Centre Award 2024. Chris Hayton, the centre’s Operations Manager, and his colleague Tim Hughes, who is responsible for student enrolment, both attended our awards ceremony at the Hilton, Leicester on the 4th July.
Chris took his first gas assessment back in 1998 and worked in gas maintenance before taking his tutoring qualifications and working as an Assessor and Internal Verifier. He joined Brookhouse in 2011 and has been responsible for the development of the centre’s MLP. He was both thrilled and surprised to have won, “We’ve only been with LCL Award for three years, so we really weren’t expecting to win!”
Going the extra mile
Brookhouse has been training and assessing candidates in the domestic gas industry since 2010. The centre was set up to plug a gap in the market. Chris explains:
"At the time, we could see lots of our competitors provided good gas training, but they didn’t include a work placement to help students gain the necessary onsite experience and portfolio evidence they need to sit their ACS qualifications.
"From the start we’ve given all the learners on our MLP a written guarantee of a work placement which means we can confidently send them out with the necessary skills and knowledge to be employable in the industry. Basically, we’ve taken the standard core gas safety syllabus and added another 50% to its content, which as far as I know makes us unique!
“The guaranteed work placement is our USP and it’s worked! Since 2010 we have successfully trained over 1800 new candidates and successfully reassessed 600 existing Gas Engineers. We’re based in West Yorkshire, but our learners come from all over the UK, as far away as Cornwall, Scotland and Ireland. Over the year's we’ve built up an amazing network that we can draw upon today, with many of our learners undertaking work experience with engineers we trained back in the day.
“One of Tim’s roles is to maintain this sense of connection and to set up the work placements for all our learners. Typically, they spend eight weeks in centre, then have a work placement to meet the IGEM standard - a minimum of 18 weeks – before they come back to us for a two week refresher and sit their ACS. It works well. 70% of our learners walk straight into work.”
It was this workplace aspect of Brookhouse’s training provision that particularly impressed our team of judges: Stewart Clements of HHIC, Brett Forster of NAPIT, Hattie Hassan MBE of Stopcocks and Charlotte Lee of the HCA.
The centre works hard to instil core skills:
“We have developed an ‘Introduction to Gas’ to our Multi-Skilled Gas Engineer MLP programme to ensure that candidates’ pipework skills and knowledge of systems and regulations are sufficient to tackle the everyday tasks and problems they’ll encounter working in the plumbing industry. In addition to delivering best practice in all aspects of core gas safety and safe isolation, we have also developed a state-of-the-art fault-finding area. Here students strip down dead boilers, identify the components, and then refit and rebuild them as per manufacturer’s instructions.
“After this, coupled with our own fault-finding acronym and flow diagrams, students progress onto fault-finding and repairing live boilers with pre-set faults. Prior to undertaking a managed work placement, students are then introduced to our chronological ‘through the ages’ 6-bay central heating area, ranging from historical G-rated heating systems through to A-rated high-efficiency systems, so that nothing they face in the real world will phase them. We believe these extra skills and knowledge set our students apart from other candidates – gives them the edge.
“As a member of Energy & Utility Skills’ Gas Industry Liaison Group, Brookhouse has been involved in devising the Standards of Training in Gas Work (IGEM/IG/1) document, which was initially published in 2014. Our training programme has been used as a benchmark for the new standards of training. We were subsequently the first and only training provider in the UK to achieve Gold Provider Status on the Energy & Utilities Independent Assessment Service (EUIAS) for a domestic gas Managed Learning Programme.
Learning for all
“In November 2020, Brookhouse signed the Armed Forces Covenant to pledge our support to serving military personnel and veterans. These days between forty and fifty percent of our learners are ex-military and after being granted Enhanced Learning Credit status in 2020, we have successfully trained 95 service leavers into exciting new careers in the domestic gas sector. Combined with our high level of training, the skills and values service leavers have acquired throughout their military service, has produced some of the best new entrant candidates the training industry has to offer.”
"I feel very proud that our efforts have been recognised and was very pleased to be a part of the first Awards evening. The whole event was excellent. A great social - with the chance to meet everyone at LCL as well as the other centres. It was interesting to see what other centres are doing.
"I’m particularly interested to find out more about the Inclusivity Charter. We’re looking to employ a female trainer at the moment and have trained eight women this year alone. We encourage learners from all races, backgrounds and cultures, so it’s great to hear that LCL has this initiative to recognise centres that are working hard to be diverse and inclusive.”
To find out more about Brookhouse, please click here.