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PATH National: Council offers 10 traineeships in
national scheme

Brighton & Hove City Council has committed to take on 10 PATH trainees under a national scheme aimed at addressing under-representation faced by people from ethnic minorities in certain professions.

The council is assisting a programme run by the national skills development agency Positive Action Training Highway (PATH National Ltd). The organisation has placed over 2000 trainees nationwide since it was founded twenty years ago.

PATH National currently has 150 placements running and aims to increase this to over 170 by the end of March 2008. Clients include numerous councils, housing associations, regional government offices and agencies.

PATH's 2/3 year traineeships in Brighton & Hove are advertised in the local press and on the council's website www.jobs.brighton-hove.gov.uk. The council stresses that these are not jobs, but traineeships specifically designed for the PATH scheme.

Applicants will need relevant qualifications and to be from an ethnic minority group, before undergoing a rigorous recruitment process in order to secure the traineeship.

Trainees, whilst in place, will work towards a relevant professional accredited qualification. When training is complete jobs are not guaranteed, however, participants may compete for posts arising in the council or elsewhere.

Training allowances, paid by PATH will be based on comparable jobs - typically £13-18,000.

To date the following five managers from various departments have taken part in the scheme and five trainee posts have been successfully filled:

Yvette Butterfield, Human Resources Manager
Sue Anderson, HRD Project Team Manager
Nicky Cambridge, Neighbourhood Manager - Tarner and Eastern Road
Bruce Nairne, Research and Consultation Manager
Annie Sparks, Divisional Environmental Health Officer

The trainee posts that have been filled are:

Trainee Human Resources Administrator, start date 16th April 2007
Trainee Human Resources Advisor, start date 29th May 2007
Trainee Community Engagement Worker, start date 4th June 2007
Trainee Consultation Officer, start date 18th June 2007
Trainee Environmental Health Officer, start date 4th September 2007

Andy Staniford, Housing Strategy, has also agreed to take on a Trainee Housing Strategy Officer, bringing the total to 6.

Four places now need to be filled and managers are encouraged to commit to this very worthwhile programme and invest in a PATH trainee.

Funding towards traineeships is available through the EQUAL project. EQUAL will contribute 40% towards the ongoing cost of the traineeship and can be accessed until December 2007.

Already a trainee planner has been in place under this positive action scheme at the council for 3 years. This is part of the Planning team's effort to address under-representation of qualified planners as part of a national programme run by PATH. 'The Tomorrow's Planners' project has placed 80 trainee Planners in Local Authorities nationally, and won the Civil Service Diversity Award 2006, for their work running this graduate programme.

Figures show ethnic minority staff are currently under-represented at the Brighton & Hove City Council. They make up just 4 per cent of the workforce compared to 7 per cent in the city's economically active population. However, just five BME people - about 2 per cent - are among the council's top 250 managers.

Positive Action has been encouraged by successive governments since the 1970s and is enshrined in the Race Relations Act.

"The Council's policy is to recruit on merit. This scheme aims to ensure BME people can compete for jobs on merit. We're playing our part in tackling a national picture of disadvantage and discrimination. People from ethnic minorities are less likely to get jobs than comparably qualified white people in a whole range of professions, including many professions that operate in local government. As a result, they're under-represented.

It will also help address national shortages of council staff in areas such as planning and environmental health where it can be extremely hard to hire qualified people."

Mary McDowall of PATH National said: "We are really pleased to be working with Brighton & Hove to place 10 individuals who have the potential to succeed and who will hopefully develop themselves with the support of the Council".

PATH National currently works with Local Authorities in Newham, Newcastle, Coventry Sandwell, Camden, Southwark, Reading, Greenwich, Brent, Thurrock, Croydon, Ealing, Blackburn, Middlesbrough and Manchester to name just a few.