PERKINS Engines feels that winning the award was recognition and appreciation of the efforts it has devoted to staff development.

"We are thrilled to have won this award," said operations director Allan Arnott.

"We have a totally integrated skills strategy that works on all levels, from apprentices through to offering staff the opportunity to take NVQs."

In July this year, Barbara Follett MP, Minister for the East of England and Hans Haefeli, president of Perkins Engines, opened a new on-site Learning Centre at the Peterborough facility.

The centre is the result of collaboration between Perkins and the East of England Development Agency (EEDA), in which a £825,000 grant was secured to expand the existing learning centre. Resources now include a simulated work environment, extensive product training facilities, virtual reality modelling suite and the introduction of a robotics and computer numerical control machining centre.

It is hoped the Learning Centre will provide the required resources for developing the skills of the current workforce and looking to the future will establish a "pipeline" for attracting talent right back through the education system.

Perkins Engines human services director Stephen Torrans signed a skills pledge in July. The pledge is a voluntary, public commitment by the leadership of the company or organisation to support all of its employees to develop their basic skills, including literacy and numeracy and achieve relevant, valuable qualifications.

"This was a particularly difficult category for the judges to award with three finalists demonstrating quite different approaches to their staff development," said host Jeremy Vine.

Throughout its 76-year history Perkins Engines has been recognised as a world leader in the design and manufacture of industrial diesel engines. It has 132 distributors in 181 countries with 3,500 outlets which provide product support around the world.

Highly Commended

MARSHALL Motor Group is one of the largest privately-owned motor groups in Britain. It has been represented in the Peterborough area since 1947 and the 10 different franchises are led by regional director Stuart George.

In 2007 Marshall began a sponsored BSc Automotive Dealership Management degree in partnership with Loughborough University.

PHP Ltd is the retained training partner with Marshall and set up The Leadership Zoo – a programme which combines all the traditional and proven principles of leadership with a selection of the best new and exciting thinking available today.


GREENSTONES is a forward-thinking, proactive accountancy practice in the Lynchwood Business Park, in Peterborough.

The company's training is evaluated on an ongoing basis.

In 2006, Greenstones became one of only 144 organisations in the country to gain the Investors in People Work Life Balance module and it was certified a platinum approved employed by ACCA having met 46 different requirements.

It is now one of 400 platinum approved accounting practices in the country and one of 17 based in Cambridgeshire.