A government grant of £41,000 to fund mapping of training provision in the timber sector may be blocked because of an argument over which body represents UK sawmillers.
Lantra, the land-based and environmental industries sector skills council, has claimed that it, and not the UK Wood Chain group (UKWC) to which the grant had initially been awarded , is the sawmillers’ representative on training.
According to Mike Marchant of Treeline, the non-profit development operation and UKWC co-ordinator, this undermines the group’s claim to be the body representing the timber sector as a whole. That puts the grant in jeopardy which, in turn, would endanger the mapping initiative that the UKWC says is the essential first step in establishing a “framework of nationally-agreed [timber training] performance standards on which new qualifications can be built”.
The UKWC will meet Lantra on January 13.
More details to follow.
