Maldon: A whole lotta jobs - but does anyone want them? (From Maldon and Burnham Standard)

Maldon: A whole lotta jobs - but does anyone want them?

6:00pm Monday 20th August 2012 in Local News By Gareth Burton

A training company that has already been forced to close a poorly used facility in Maldon fears for its future because it does not have enough teenagers to fill its apprenticeships.

Lota, which offers training for 16 to 18-year-olds across Essex, has 63 vacancies to fill in areas such as engineering, childcare and business.

It is the most amount of apprenticeships the company has ever had at one time, but bosses are concerned because not enough youngsters want to take them up.

Wendy Twydell, client relationship manager at Lota, said: “I have never ever been in this situation where we have so many jobs and can’t fill them.

“We are overloaded with employers, which is fantastic, but if we don’t get those filled we won’t get anymore and we will be back to square one again."

The decline has already led to the closure of the company’s YourPlace facility in Market Hill, Maldon, which lies largely unused only 15 months after opening and has done on an intermittent basis since Christmas.

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