Lincoln College Group CEO Gary Headland, Lincolnshire Police Chief Constable Bill Skelly and G4S Managing Director John Whitwam were all present for the opening.
This new approach to training for policing careers consists of four pillars of training.
School leavers will be able to take career pathways to be emergency call handlers, IT support technicians and into business administration roles. As well as core qualifications they will also complete an exciting programme of productivity activities.
The “Productivity Wrapper” to their course involves students spending a significant amount of time in policing environments doing activities related to things like: stop and search, public order incidents crime scene investigation, drones, cyber, emergency call handling, dog handling and fitness activities.
Graduates can progress onto call handler, IT and business administration apprenticeship training that will also be used to upskill existing support staff. Further apprenticeships will include cyber training for serving detectives.
Lincoln College is also exploring the development of a Policing Pre-Join Degree as part of the Policing College. This will aim to put candidates ahead of the game in police officer recruitment and prepare candidates to “pass first time” if they are successful. Where appropriate and possible, we want students to join the Special Constabulary as part of their course to increase their cultural awareness and productivity.
The fourth pillar of training is Customised Solutions, which aim to plug skills gaps in the existing workforce to improve staff productivity, effectiveness and health and wellbeing.
Examples of customised solutions include elements of leadership and management training, software competency training, literacy and numeracy courses and English for Speakers of a Foreign Language.
Lincoln College Group CEO Gary Headland said: “This is the start of a really exciting partnership journey with Lincolnshire Police and G4S.
“Our mission is to be employer-led, producing a highly skilled and productive local workforce and the opening today reflects a long period of employer engagement, where we have listened to the training needs of Lincolnshire Police and worked closely with them and G4S to design pathways to meet them.
“Our commercial and international work enables us to invest in the additional productivity training required to make young people work-ready in this way and we are delighted to add the Policing College to our programme of employer-led training, which includes; the Air & Defence College, the Construction College, Our Digital Business Academy, the Team KnowHow Academy and Made in Gainsborough.”
Lincolnshire Police Chief Constable Bill Skelly said: “I’m thrilled that we’ve been able to create this new Policing College for people in Lincolnshire. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to be able to help nurture and develop people with an interest in policing and for those individuals to gain valuable skills, qualifications and experience. I’m really looking forward to seeing the first wave of students who will come out of the Policing College. I’m certain they’ll be an absolute asset to policing in Lincolnshire and make a fantastic contribution to the County.”
Also present at today’s opening ceremony were Lincolnshire Police Assistant Chief Officer Andrew White, Lincolnshire Local Enterprise Partnership Employment and Skills Board Chairman Pat Doody and Lincolnshire County Council Executive Councillor for Community Safety, Barry Young.
