It is with regret that we announce that East Midlands New Technology Initiative (NTI) will close its doors at the end of July 2010, due to changes in Government funding.
For the past six years the NTI has distributed over £3.5million to small and medium sized businesses to invest in equipment to keep them at the forefront of new technology, and encouraged them to improve employee skills through high level training at the region’s colleges and universities.
Whilst this is a very sad decision, the success enjoyed by the NTI since the company started way back in 2003 cannot be underestimated. During that time the company awarded 559 grants to the value of just under £3.5m and its member network of the region’s leading universities and colleges has benefited from over £2.2m capital investment.
In three independent evaluation documents, NTI has been noted to have achieved or exceeded all its outputs and targets, and has been seen as a model of good practice across the region.
As well as the grants programme, NTI also won funding for one of two East Midlands Centres for Knowledge Exchange which were funded for five years until July 2009. NTI also led a Learning Skills Council (LSC) funded Innovation in Sustainable Construction project - one of only five projects to be funded out of 133 applications nationally - and this has been hugely successful. The company led two of the Action Based Task Groups for the Skills for Sustainable Communities Lifelong Learning Network until end March 2010.
Hilary Whaley and the whole NTI team would like to thank all of our members for their support since 2003. Whilst we sad that NTI finally has to close, we know we can move on in the knowledge that we did everything we set out to achieve and more, and are respected for the work we have done and the contribution we have made to both the economic regeneration and skills development agendas in the East Midlands.
The future of the Beyond Brokerage and Catapulting Kids Further! projects will be announced shortly.