Wessex Partnerships Ltd provides a wide range of high quality services to organisations across the public, private and voluntary sectors, including project development and management, finance and contract management, research and evaluation, and strategic development.  Here are some examples of our successful collaborations. 

Project development and management
Finance and contract management
Research and evaluation
Strategic development
Vital boost for Ford's community learning project
Funding boosts excellence in tourism
Inspiration through the airwaves

Wessex Partnerships Ltd has achieved another success in helping a social enterprise start up, this time a community café working with the Enham Trust.

Enham seeks to improve equality of opportunities, access to employment, independence and a quality of life for disabled people.  Enham has previous experience and knowledge of operating a community Café, but this is the first to operate in Portsmouth.  WPL worked with Enham to prepare the business plan and marketing strategy to secure the funding from Enham’s Board.

Through Café Enham in Omega Street, Somerstown, Enham is able to expand its existing services to the disabled community and provide local training and employment for disabled people who are otherwise disadvantaged in the workplace.

On 2 November 2007, the Lord Mayor of Portsmouth, Councillor Mike Blake officially opened ‘Café Enham’.  Leading councillors and officials attended the ceremony to celebrate the opening of a valued asset in the community.  The community café is open five days a week offering healthy eating options and increasing community spirit in an area of particular deprivation within Portsmouth. 

Project development and management
Budding entrepreneurs in the south are benefiting from more than £900,000 funding aimed at helping their businesses grow.

This massive sum of money, provided by the European Social Fund and secured with the help of Wessex Partnerships, has enabled Southampton City Council and Eastleigh Borough Council’s two small business support schemes - Enterprise South and its successor, Southern Entrepreneurs – to offer vital assistance to very small, new and rural firms around the region.  

The projects supply advice and guidance on all aspects of running a micro-business, as well as one-to-one mentoring, networking and workshop-based training. Southampton City Council’s training and employment initiatives manager, Tony Bates, says WPL’s help has made a crucial difference.

He explained: “In addition to winning the funding, they have assisted us with the management and administration of the projects, and been a key member of the team.

“Their input has been very significant; in fact, it would have been difficult to run the projects without them.  I certainly hope to work with them again in the future.”

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Finance and contract management
Workers in the UK’s manufacturing industry have a brand new qualification to help boost their careers - thanks to a project managed by Wessex Partnerships.

Employees across a wide range of sectors, from car repairs to construction, use compressed air as part of their jobs. Until recently, however, there was no formal qualification to recognise their skills.

But now, since WPL worked closely with the British Compressed Air Society (BCAS) and Oxford and Cherwell College, an innovative, online e-learning course - the OCC Level 2 Certificate in Compressed Air Technology - has been introduced.

Wessex Partnerships’ role as project manager, through its contract with the Learning and Skills Council for Milton Keynes, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, included liaising with BCAS and the college to ensure the contract was carried out correctly, and giving advice on all the issues surrounding the delivery of the programme.

In addition, WPL was responsible for making sure expenditure of the project’s finances of £172,000, provided by the Local Intervention and Development Fund, was kept within budgetary limits.

Chris Dee, executive director of BCAS, said: “Wessex’s consultant was very helpful, and invaluable in liaising between us and the LSC.  In fact, he was brilliant.”

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Research and evaluation

Jobless residents in Southampton will now get even greater support, after Wessex Partnerships recommended improvements to a project to get the city’s people back to work.

The ‘Wheatsheaf Extra’ scheme - run jointly by local lifelong learning charity the Wheatsheaf Trust, and No Limits, the counselling and advice service for under 25s - provides a wide programme of support to help the unemployed find new jobs and access training.

Financed by the European Social Fund, the project helps groups ranging from young people and single parents to ethnic minorities, women returners and the disabled.

Wessex Partnerships was commissioned by the Wheatsheaf Trust to carry out a wide-ranging evaluation of the scheme, which would review the effectiveness of its administration and advice, as well as its results.

The assessment involved meeting the project’s manager and delivery partners, as well as interviewing some of the people it has helped, and the end result was a resounding thumbs-up - for both the scheme and Wessex Partnerships itself.

Jonathan Cheshire, chief executive of the Trust, said: “WPL’s evaluation was extremely useful, as we have used its findings to improve our data processing systems - and it will also help us to set up new projects in the future.”

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Strategic development
A quiet North Dorset town is soon to be revitalised by a flagship community project - made possible by vital support from Wessex Partnerships.

The scheme, to build a multi-purpose centre in Sturminster Newton, will provide new community offices for the town council, as well as a covered market for residents.

Faced with limited resources, the local community regeneration partnership, Sturquest, commissioned WPL to write a feasibility plan to look at three affordable options.

The company also brought the project’s different elements, stakeholder interests and design work together in a sensible business plan and finance strategy, which attracted both public and lottery funding.

Construction work has recently begun on the new facility and Hugh De Iongh, Sturquest’s community development worker, is delighted that the project is underway at last.

He said: “Wessex helped us in three main areas - looking at the feasibility of the three options, giving us advice on legal structures and funding issues, and helping us to decide which project to choose.

“Their help has been significant in clarifying our thinking, and has set us on the way forward.  This project will really put the heart back into Sturminster Newton.”
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Vital boost for Ford’s community learning project
Hundreds of people in the Southampton area are discovering new learning opportunities, thanks to a community learning project which has won £250,000 from the Government’s UK Online fund and the New Opportunities Fund.

The grant has enabled the Ford Community ICT Learning Partnership to expand so that it can help more than 700 adults and young people access information and communication technology (ICT) at a network of accessible locations. That means better resources to help people whom the ICT revolution has not yet reached, and who remain disadvantaged as a result.

The project, backed by empathetic support workers, has succeeded in encouraging people, who previously lacked the confidence, to learn new skills in an atmosphere of fun and mutual enjoyment.

Angela Wright, chief executive of Solent Skillquest which set up the partnership with Ford Motor Company, said Wessex Partnerships was “crucial” to them winning the grant. She said: “We had to effectively rewrite the schedule into one that involved a number of community partners. Wessex Partnerships added in a lot of the details and statistics that we simply did not have the time to do.”

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Funding boosts excellence in tourism
Tourism chiefs have been spearheading a drive to develop staff and improve service in the regional hospitality, leisure and attractions industries – with help from Wessex Partnerships.

Wessex Partnerships won more than £400,000 in ESF funding to help finance two projects to boost standards in tourism – which is vital to every region’s economy.

The first project - Quality Service, Quality People - was designed to improve training practices among employers in the sector.

The second project - Business Excellence for Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure Industries - offers 120 managers in the industry the opportunity to gain new knowledge and skills in order to meet the changing demands of their customers.

Senior training manager Sue Gill, from Tourism South East, was delighted with the way the partnership with Wessex Partnerships worked.

She said: “They worked alongside us to prepare the bids. We had the tourism knowledge and the contacts but simply did not have the time to write complicated bids. “The projects are working well and we’re now talking to Wessex Partnerships about some new projects in September.”

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Inspiration Through The Airwaves
With huge media output competing for the interest of today’s young people, Havant’s Leigh Park schools have taken a novel solution to make learning as compulsive as Eastenders or reality TV.

Wessex Partnerships has assisted an imaginative partnership between BBC South and Leigh Park schools to secure £66,000 from the European Social Fund to resource a state-of-the-art media suite at Park Community School.

The media suite, at Park Community School in Leigh Park, Havant, is equipped with radio, television and recording facilities and hundreds of school pupils are working with BBC Radio Solent and BBC South to put together their own programmes.

The aim is to raise grades in speaking and literacy at the specialist arts school and also offer training for work in the media. It will be used by 15 schools across Leigh Park and by the wider community out of hours.

Staff believe the BBC backed project will transform life for the people of Leigh Park by providing both pupils and local residents with an additional voice through skills in broadcast and media arts technology.

BBC South has generously seconded two full-time producers to this ground-breaking project to train staff and pupils for its first year.

Funding of £170,000 has come from the school’s specialist budget and a further £130,000 to equip the studio has come from school funds. Wessex Partnerships secured the additional funding to enable teachers to train at BBC radio and television studios and pass their knowledge onto schools and community groups across the Leigh Park area.

Park Community School assistant head teacher Nicky Sherlock said the community media facility - one of the first of its kind in the UK - is inspiring young and old alike.

"We have school children who are improving in areas ranging from reading skills to geography because they are more inspired to learn if they are making their own TV and radio features and programmes. But it is not just children. Older people are enjoying making programmes too.

"The media suite has built a bridge between the school and the rest of the community. Just a year ago, the idea was a dream but WPL sourced the additional funding for us to turn it into an incredible reality."

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