Skills and Training for Rural Business

The Skills and Training for Rural Business programme is a Barclays-funded initiative which aims to improve National Trust farm tenants’ existing skills so as to raise standards and performance in land management, to develop tenants’ skills for businesses diversification and to demonstrate solutions in land management and business development.

The project started in October 2006 and will run through to October 2008. To evaluate its success and to identify the lessons that can be learned from it, the project is gathering evidence from a range of sources, including;

A postal survey of tenants’ attitudes towards and participation within training and development activities at the outset and end of the project.

Post-event surveys of attendees to elucidate the immediate and medium term impact of specific training and skills development events.

A telephone survey of tenants to give a greater depth of understanding of issues identified within post-event surveys.

Generation of case-studies demonstrating across a range of sectors the benefits of training and skills development and making explicit the social, economic and environmental benefits.