The National Apprenticeship Awards, now in their 14th year, showcase the successes and benefits of apprenticeships across England in the last year. We have announced the winners and highly commended entries at an awards ceremony held at the Royal York Hotel.

Apprentices and employers fought off tough competition by demonstrating how businesses are growing their own talent pool with apprenticeships and how apprentices have made a significant contribution to their workplace.

This year’s winners for the North East are:

Apprentice categories:

• Intermediate Apprentice of the Year: Dawn Cochrane, South Tees Health Trust
• Advanced Apprentice of the Year: Alice Hurren, Department for Education
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Site Licence Companies award for Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year: Chris Armstrong, GlaxoSmithKline
• Apprenticeship Champion: Amanda Graham, North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust

And highly commended:

• Intermediate Apprentice of the Year: Paige Reavley, Northumbria Healthcare Foundation Trust
• Advanced Apprentice of the Year: Tilly Greer, GlaxoSmithKline
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Site Licence Companies award for Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year: Sophie Tweddle, GlaxoSmithKline
• Apprenticeship Champion: Karen Hookham, Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust and Peter Calvert, Tad Web Solutions Ltd

Employer categories:

• Small Employer of the Year: McCarrick Construction
• Large Employer of the Year: Home Group
• The Open University award for Macro Employer of the Year: Lookers plc
• Rolls-Royce award for Newcomer Large Employer of the Year: Magnet

And highly commended:

• Large Employer of the Year: Go North East and Hays Travel
• The Open University award for Macro Employer of the Year: Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust and Accenture
• Rolls-Royce award for Newcomer Large Employer of the Year: County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service

This year’s winners for Yorkshire and the Humber are:

Apprentice categories:

• Intermediate Apprentice of the Year: Emily Faulkner, G E V Wind Power
• Advanced Apprentice of the Year: Hannah Magowan, Dale Power Solutions
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Site Licence Companies award for Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year: Mickyle Clark, Dale Power Solutions Ltd
• Apprenticeship Champion: Sarah Barley, South Hunsley School

And highly commended:

• Intermediate Apprentice of the Year: Emily Grimes, York College
• Advanced Apprentice of the Year: Calum James Finn, Nestle UK Ltd. and Innes Macdonald, British Army
• Nuclear Decommissioning Authority Site Licence Companies award for Higher or Degree Apprentice of the Year: Benjamin Bruin, Openreach
• Apprenticeship Champion: Rebecca Edgecumbe, Interserve Learning & Employment and Mandy Scott, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Employer categories:

• Medium Employer of the Year: Ebsford Environmental Ltd
• Large Employer of the Year: Dale Power Solutions Ltd
• The Open University award for Macro Employer of the Year: Lloyds Banking Group
• BAE Sytems award for Newcomer SME Employer of the Year: Blue Logic
• Rolls-Royce award for Newcomer Large Employer of the Year: YBS Group (Yorkshire Building Society)

And highly commended:

• Medium Employer of the Year: Michael and Margaret Naylor and Associates
• Large Employer of the Year: Liberty Speciality Steels and Syngenta
• The Open University award for Macro Employer of the Year: Nestlé
• Rolls-Royce award for Newcomer Large Employer of the Year: Zenith and Dovecote Park Ltd

Following the 6 regional ceremonies taking place across England, winners from each category will have their entries sent for national judging. Three from each category will then be selected as national finalists. The very best employer category entries are also in the running to feature in the prestigious Centrica sponsored Top 100 Apprenticeship Employers list 2017.

Skills and Apprenticeships Minister Anne Milton said:

The National Apprenticeship Awards are a fantastic way to demonstrate the incredible benefits and contributions of both apprentices and their employers across the country.

My personal congratulations go out to everyone who has taken part in the National Apprenticeship Awards so far, and also to those heading to the national finals. You truly are worthy ambassadors for apprenticeships.

Sue Husband, director, National Apprenticeship Service, added:

The National Apprenticeship Awards allow talented apprentices and committed employers from across our regions to receive well-deserved recognition for their apprenticeship achievements. In turn I hope that the exposure given to winners encourages more employers and individuals to get involved.

Winners recognised today in the North East, Yorkshire and Humber region show the range of sectors and variety of job roles apprenticeships are available in, and how they can deliver the skills employers need. I congratulate all winners and highly commended finalists on their success. For those heading to the national finals, I wish them the very best of luck for the next stage of the competition.

National award winners and the Top 100 Employers will be announced at a ceremony to be held on 18 January 2018 in London.

This year’s sponsors for the North East, Yorkshire and Humber awards are YH Training, Px Group, Yorkshire Housing, Leeds College of Building and Baltic Training.

To find out more information about apprenticeships or the apprenticeship awards visit GOV.UK. Alternatively call 08000 150 600 or follow @apprenticeships on Twitter and National Apprenticeship Service on LinkedIn.

Thank you very much everybody for being here. I’m really pleased to welcome you to Downing Street today. I think this is a very significant day for our country in terms of what we’re publishing today.

I think when it comes to the health of our economy and the performance of our health service, or the results of our education system we’ve got plenty of data to show us where things are working well and where things are not working in the population as a whole. But what we’re publishing today, I think, is data that fills a glaring gap, by analysing how a person’s ethnicity affects their experience in public services and how that affects their lives. And that holds a mirror up to our society and I think establishes a new and permanent resource for our country.

I think this is important and launching this piece of work was one of the first acts that I did as Prime Minister and it is a personal priority to me because I absolutely, passionately believe that how far you go in life, should be about your talents and your hard work and nothing else.

We know that Britain today in the 21st Century is a diverse multi-ethnic democracy. Diversity is a source of strength and pride for us. But when one person works just as hard as another person – and has got the same ambitions and aspirations – but experiences a worse outcome solely the grounds of their ethnicity, then this is a problem that I believe we have to confront.

And that was the approach that I took when I was Home Secretary and I looked at the issue of stop and search and saw the significant disparity in stops and searches – far more young men from black and minority ethnic backgrounds being stopped and searched. But the number of incidents didn’t actually equate to that and justify that. We knew there was an injustice there and we had to act and that’s why we shook the system up and I am pleased to say the number of black people being stopped and searched has fallen by two thirds. I think that’s the difference that we can make when we identify the problem properly and then actually confront injustice and I hope that this audit will empower us to tackle many more of these issues.

I think the data we’re releasing today and the online platform that presents it, should quickly become to be regarded as the central resource in the battle to defeat ethnic injustice. It’s a world first, no country has ever produced a piece of work looking at the lived experience of people of different ethnicities which is as extensive and ambitious as this and I want to give a huge vote of thanks to everybody who’s worked so hard on putting this together and helped us in what we’re doing.

But it is not a one-off event this is a first but it’s not something that’s only going to happen today and the data sets and the online platform that we’re launching are now a permanent resource. I think that’s really important they will be updated and new data will be added and we’re fully committed to this for the long-term. And of course, as you know, as you look at the data much of it has existed for years but it’s been spread across the government system. It’s been difficult to access, perhaps it hasn’t been looked at through this particular prism before, and now it will be easily available and people can look at the data, they can look at the methodology for putting the data together, they can interrogate that data, they can measure our progress and they can focus our minds.

Overall the findings will be uncomfortable but it’s right that we’ve identified them, shone a light on them and we need to confront these issues that we have identified. So we are going to take action, for example in relation to the issue of unemployment for people from particular BAME communities we will be identifying hotspots where we will be putting particular extra work in to help people into the workplace.

The Ministry of Justice is going to take forward with recommendations from the Lammy Review that includes performance indicators in prisons to assess the quality of outcomes for prisoners of all ethnicities; committing to publish all criminal justice databases held on ethnicity by default; and working to ensure that the prison workforce itself is more representative of this country as a whole.

In schooling, the Department for Education is taking forward a review on external exclusions. Again, there is some significant differences shown from this data on exclusions. This will share best practice nationwide and will focus on the experiences of groups who are disproportionately likely to be excluded. And the team in the Cabinet Office, which has been working on this, will be continuing its work in the future.

I know that people around this table – I’ve worked with some of you over the years – have devoted many years working on these issues and we’re keen to hear from you about your thoughts on the audit, your own experiences and the experiences of the people that you’re representing.

I was with a group of young people yesterday at a school in south London and hearing from them, their direct experiences, absolutely tapped into the sort of information that we are seeing in this audit and the impact. It wasn’t just their immediate experience, it was the impact on their aspiration and where they thought their life could go and I think this is really important,

I think what this audit shows is that there isn’t anywhere to hide. And that’s not just for government, it is for society as a whole actually. The issues are now out in the open and we all have a responsibility to work together to tackle them.

So I think the message is very simple; if the disparities can’t be explained, they must be changed. Britain has come a long way, we must recognise that we’ve come a long way, in promoting equality and opportunity. But what the data published today shows is that we still have a way to go if we’re truly going to have a country that does work for everyone.

So thank you very much everybody for coming today and I am looking forward to hearing your views in due course.

The £3 million project took around 2 years to complete and is designed to provide the optimum ‘safe place’ training environment for armed forces personnel in order to equip them with the skills required for operational duties at home and overseas.

The project has seen the existing Garelochhead ranges transformed in to 2 new developments: a grouping and zeroing (G&Z) range and an electronic target tange (ETR) and a single range building complex with classrooms, a targetry store and workshops, which serve the 2 ranges.

Brigadier Neil Dalton OBE, head of training for the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) said:

The opening of these ranges represents a significant investment by defence, delivered by DIO, to provide the modern facilities required to develop and maintain individual shooting skills.

These ranges will serve a host of nearby units, as well as those using the neighbouring training area, and are a great further boost to the quality of infrastructure in the Clyde area.

The programme delivery was managed by Scotland’s DIO service delivery training team and industry partner Landmarc Support Services with local contractor, Mackenzie Construction Ltd responsible for the build phase of the project.

General Bob Bruce and Brigadier Neil Dalton at the official opening. Crown copyright. All rights reserved.

Lt Col Mike Onslow, Commander of DIO service delivery training team in Scotland and Northern Ireland said:

DIO is committed to improving the facilities and services that it provides to the armed forces and this project is a great example of how we are doing this. The benefits offered by these new facilities are legion. They are also the result of five years of hard work, detailed collaboration and numerous opportunities to practice our problem solving abilities. 

The people involved in delivering these ranges and the supporting infrastructure have been superb and suffered the capricious nature of the west coast weather; they have my admiration and thanks.  We have a complex that is efficient; environmentally future proofed and will provide the required training to all elements of defence based in the close proximity and elsewhere for years to come.

Kevin Kneeshaw, regional operations manager for Landmarc Support Services in Scotland added:

By working collaboratively with DIO and our contractor, Mackenzie, we have been able to overcome a number of unique challenges to deliver first class training facilities that are not only sustainable, but will deliver cost savings for our armed forces.