Hundreds of young adults on security and rail traineeships were made to work illegal hours, a government investigation into a college subcontracting debacle has found.
Strode College is currently negotiating a “substantial” clawback with the Department for Education after an extended audit identified breaches of two funding rules. The issue threatens to drop the college’s financial health from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’.
The investigation spans the three academic years between 2019/20 to 2021/22 when the college received around £7.5 million and subcontracted it out to other training providers to deliver traineeships.
Principal John Revill, who discovered the blunder on the first day of the job when he joined in June 2022, described it as a “technical breach” which occurred due to weak subcontracting oversight processes in place under the former leadership.
