College of West Anglia and Worksop Football Academy

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, what long hours you have been working today. I have an important issue to raise. It is relevant to my constituency and the Minister is well aware of it, and I suggest to the Minister that it has wider resonance beyond my constituency. It is one example, although not isolated, of a significant problem that afflicts further education and the use of sports academies.

In January 2015, the Worksop Guardian ran a report on its website—it was later in the newspaper and on the local football club’s website—that outlined how a football academy was to be established in Worksop by Doncaster College, in partnership with Worksop Town football club. The report stated:

“Worksop Town hope to give local youngsters a future in football or guide them into further education, through their new Football Academy.”

It went on:

“Students will combine daily training sessions and matches with classroom studies, under the watchful eye of teaching staff from Doncaster College.”

The academy would offer academic qualifications, the possibility of going on to study at university, and perhaps a scholarship to America, with level 1, 2 or 3 BTEC sports diplomas, worth up to three A-levels, for each participant. According to the paper, Mr Russ Horsley, the sports academy development manager at Doncaster College, called it an exciting partnership

“in line with our new academy of sport”

founded by Doncaster College.

Unfortunately, having made this great announcement, Doncaster College did not fulfil that commitment to establish a football academy with Worksop Town football club, although the community and I discovered that only some years later. Instead, the contract went via another college, the College of West Anglia, which, at the time and throughout the existence of the academy, neither I nor anybody else in my constituency, or anybody connected with Worksop and Worksop Town football club, had any knowledge of or indeed had even heard of. The college subcontracted to a company called GEMEG whose director was one Russell Horsley, the major shareholder and company secretary since he formed the company in 2011. That is the same Russell Horsley who was the sports development manager at Doncaster College who had announced the initial partnership.

The Minister should be aware that the local further education college—known as North Notts College at the time—tried particularly hard to get in on the act and run this football academy with the local football club, but it was told in no uncertain terms that there was a better deal with Doncaster College. Despite my interventions on behalf of my local college, we were rebuffed and told that this was a perfect relationship.

What transpired was not quite what had been promised. The College of West Anglia was not known to us. It had previously had a relationship in a sports location called Gresham, near West Bridgford, just by the city of Nottingham. It was around an hour from my constituency—about 50 miles away. It was a place that none of my constituents had ever visited and a place that I had never heard of until I discovered that, apparently, the young trainees of the academy from Worksop were all at Gresham for the first six months of their £168,000 Government-funded course. I was able to demonstrate very quickly, within minutes, that zero of my constituents had ever visited Gresham. Most had never visited Nottingham. None of them had heard of the College of West Anglia. Their course had been in Worksop, and yet the College of West Anglia claimed—and has claimed right up to this year—that these students were being trained in Nottingham.

According to West Anglia, during a visit on 8 February 2016, no learners or staff were present. This cannot be a surprise because no learners had ever visited this establishment, yet the college, having taken £168,000 in Government money, was maintaining that it was delivering, through a subcontractor, this fantastic course in Gresham. With all the standards required, it said that it was guaranteeing the health and safety and the quality of the teaching and the output, but this never actually took place; it was a fiction, a fantasy. There were, of course, zero health and safety assessments, and zero quality assessment of what was going on in Worksop, which, suffice it to say, was not a success. This course cost £168,000 and nobody completed it—nobody, not a single student. The students had a bit of a view on it.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this matter to the House. Does he not agree that this case highlights very clearly the importance of accountability and traceability of public funds? May I congratulate him on the important, vital and creditable work that he has done in bringing this scandal to light?

[John Mann]

Absolutely.

What was the College of West Anglia doing with £168,000 of taxpayers’ money? Well, I can tell the House what it was not doing. It was not funding food for any of the trainees, who were expected to pay

“£3 a day for food at a pub”.

That was part of the course for every trainee every day. The trainees were also required to pay “£70 for training kit”. They were not assessed for bursaries. Now, I have met a lot of these students. I know my constituents; I have looked at their addresses. I know that most of them would have got a bursary. A girl with dyslexia would have got a good bursary under disability discrimination provisions. But they could not get a bursary because they were not assessed for one. Some should have received free meals, but they were not assessed for free meals.

The students should have been given the equipment they required to carry out the course, but they were charged for the training kit and were required to buy their own computers to take into a classroom. But it was not a classroom. In fact, this was a further subcontract because Worksop Town’s ground and clubhouse—known to the fans as “the bar”—in which this course took place is subcontracted from another organisation. So the College of West Anglia subcontracts to a company called GEMEG, which partly subcontracts to Worksop Town football club, which subcontracts part of the facility from another outfit and pays £2,800 for the privilege of doing so.

No travel costs were paid, unlike many other colleges with bursaries, so these young 16-year-olds had to pay to travel. One verified to me that travel was £5 a day. Another wrote to say:

“We never had set times to start and finish.”

Another said:

“I coached in schools and didn’t get paid.”

Coached in schools? Well, hang on a minute. Where is the safeguarding in the 12 primary schools where these students were expected to coach? These students have been put at theoretical risk for the rest of their lives for any claim that could be brought against them.

The schools were also at risk because they had no idea. Many thought they were paying a company called Tiger Enterprises, owned by the manager of their local Worksop Town football club. It was Tiger Enterprises that received the fine for non-attendance, paid by cheque by one of the participants. So hang on a minute—the College of West Anglia has £168,000 of taxpayers’ money, and one of its students is charged £100, which goes to a private company owned solely by the manager of the local football club, for non-attendance at the College of West Anglia course. Somebody is owed some money here—some of these students, who have some protections under the law. But the law does not really seem to have applied to them when it came to this course, this college and its actions.

Section 7 of the Children and Young Persons Act 2008 puts a requirement on the college for the general wellbeing of children. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006 also puts a requirement on the college, but it did not even know the location of these young people. It did not know that these young people were going into primary schools—untrained and without insurance—to coach four and five-year-olds in football.

This is a shambles and a scandal. My constituents were put at risk and none of them got qualifications. Other people made money. Worksop Town managed to get £20,726 out of the £168,000 as its share of the loot for what it was providing in some way. Yet the community sports ground that provided the facility required in the course for the playing of sport is still owed over £5,000 to this very day. The College of West Anglia, having failed to deliver a course that provided any real qualifications, having received £168,000 of taxpayers’ money, having failed to address safeguarding, health and safety, or quality control of any kind, and having not even known which part of Nottinghamshire, 50 miles out, these young people were at, has not even paid the bill for its course to a community club run entirely, 100%, by volunteers. That is the level of the scandal.

To reiterate the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), what is going wrong when the College of West Anglia today refuses to meet me about this and refuses to pay its debt? The chair of governors and the principal say that they have dealt with the issues, but they have not dealt with the issues of this scandal whereby they used their name to rip off the taxpayer for this money, to provide no qualifications, to put my constituents at risk, to cost my constituents money, and to leave a community sports club about £6,000 out of pocket when most of the local kids’ teams are playing football in places where they are trying to raise money for toilets and changing rooms.

I want this college to pay its due moneys immediately. But I hope, as well, that the Minister will look at a system that allows this kind of scandal to arise. It would have been perfectly feasible to deliver a good course, run well, that motivated these young people and where the vast majority of them would qualify and have the chance to go on to further things, rather than the shambles faced by 23 young people in year one and an equal number in year two who did the course a month or two before it eventually collapsed, which is how I found out about it. As for those in the Football Association and the football world who have ticked every box to endorse this and allow it to happen, where on earth were they—lacking the safeguarding that is a pre-requisite to their existence? They were not there, and they have a lot of questions to answer. I hope that the Minister is going to change the system so that money from the taxpayer and from her Department—I know she was shocked about this—is never wasted in this way again.