David Thoms

Said the following about Richard Constable:

“Richard was asked to take up the position of Lead Union Learning representative for the RMT union last year, as there was a vacancy because the previous person had resigned, on taking up the position last year it became apparent that he was the only person that was doing anything towards Union Learning in partnership with the company.

The role meant that he had to ask staff what they wanted to learn then set up a programmes to enable the staff to undertake the learning, he was also tasked with asking all of the train carers (cleaners) within the company if they wanted to progress, and if they did set up with an outside training company assessments for functional skills, if they came up to a certain standard they could then progress onto a cleaning apprenticeship, if they did not come up to the necessary standard they would be offered a short course to bring them up to the standard required.

The programme of work to enable this to happen meant that Richard had to visit each site to look and make sure that there was suitable rooms to do these assessments, this also meant visiting each site to talk to the staff of which some only did night shift, so Richard would have to leave his house in the evening to go to the depots to talk to the staff to encourage them to come and do the assessments.

He was also present for when the assessments took place to ensure that everything went smoothly with the staff and outside training company, this also meant leaving his house in the evenings when assessments were being done for the night staff.

About 50% of the staff took up the opportunity to do the assessments of which 50% of these have now signed up to do the apprenticeships, with the others taking the opportunity of coming up to the required standard by doing the short programme in functional skills

Richard also opened up a learning centre in Croydon to enable staff to do courses in the MS office suite of programmes of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, also doing e-learning courses in foreign languages of which there is a constant flow of staff enjoying the opportunity to upgrade there knowledge and skills in work related programmes or learning a foreign language.

Without all of his hard work and commitment in obtaining relevant materials and dedicating his time inside and outside of work hours none of this would of been possible, and I can not stress to highly the amount of time and effort Richard has put into this and think he is a worthy nomination for this award.“