Skills development for food and drink manufacturing is to be boosted by three new appointments at Improve, the sector skills council.

Adele Barlow has taken up the new role of national projects manager, striving to exploit skills initiatives at devolved government, UK government, and European government levels to the best advantage of food and drink manufacturers.

Her first major project is to represent the sector’s bid in England to establish a new Sector Compact with government, which is aimed at delivering more flexible and better directed public funding for employee learning, primarily through Train to Gain, the initiative that supports learning towards vocational qualifications. Adele has previously worked for organisations involved in developing innovative learning and qualifications in many sectors, her last role being in healthcare.

Peter Johnson has joined Improve as skills project manager, and is focusing on three main areas: expanding the flexibility of apprenticeship frameworks to make them more relevant to more workers, developing the new Young Apprenticeship in food and drink manufacturing for 14 to 16-year-olds in schools; and representing the sector in the development of the new Diploma in Science for 14 to 19-year-olds in schools. Peter started his own career as an apprentice telephone engineer, rising to become a senior tutor at BT before moving into learning and development management, latterly in local government.

 Sally Worsley-Speck has been appointed skills development adviser, and is working primarily on the reform of existing vocational and vocationally linked qualifications and the development of new qualifications and learning credits in order to expand and increase flexibility in learning options within the Qualifications Framework for food and drink manufacturing.  Sally has extensive experience in the management of learning and development programmes in both the public and private sectors.