Government spends £30,000 of public money on GCSE challenge
Friday, May 15, 2015
A Government body racked up a £30,000 legal bill trying to avoid changing controversial rules over apprenticeships – and then tried to get a training company to pay it.
PBD, a Suffolk-based training company which employs 20 people, would have been crippled if it had had to fork out for the Government's legal costs, its owner has said.
The company took Skills for Care and Development (SfCD) to court last October to get the five-year time limit on GCSEs for Level 3 apprentices removed from the early years apprenticeship framework, arguing that the removal of functional skills was also unlawful.
The rule meant that GCSEs which were more than five-years-old could not count towards an apprenticeship unless they were an A grade. As a result, many apprentices had to resit their ‘out of date’ exams again in order to receive apprenticeship funding from the Government.
The case was successful, with Nursery World reporting last December that business secretary Vince Cable agreed to delete the controversial ‘five year rule’ from this April.
This week the action was finally abandoned, with each side agreeing to bear its own costs, subject to approval from the High Court.
PBD boss Ross Midgley has produced documents showing that SfCD, the framework issuing authority, which is paid for with government funds, tried to persuade the court to refuse his application limiting the amount he would be liable to pay.
Mr Midgley said ‘we tried everything to avoid legal action' adding he raised the matter in writing several times over a period of months before before seeking judicial review, but was ignored. He said, 'As soon as the papers were served, SfCD racked up well over £30,000 of legal costs.
‘There was every chance that, by the time the case was decided in court, we would be facing a potential costs bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds. Confident as we were of our case, this was a poker game that a small company could not afford to play. The last seven months have been a nightmare.'
Mr Midgley, who represented himself, added, 'Unlike SfCD, PBD’s own costs ... were negligible – just my time and a few hundred pounds of court fees and photocopying. In future, those with stewardship of public funds might do better to consult their lawyers before they act.'
A spokesman for the department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which licenses SfCD said, ‘We make no comment on legal matters.’
