Today’s article is a collaboration between The Dispatch and our Liverpool-based sister publication, The Post. We have been working together to dig into Redstone Training, a ‘skills’ provider which took a combined £3 million from regional mayors in Birmingham and Liverpool which is now under investigation for a variety of allegations. If you want to read the full story, you’ll need to be a paying member.
Ask virtually anyone who’s worked alongside Matthew Brooks, and they’ll tell you the same thing: Brooks is one hell of a schmoozer. Former colleagues recall him landing new clients for his company, Redstone Training, at high end restaurants or out on the golf course, as he built the company into a successful skills provider that has earned millions of pounds of public money, including from the metro mayors of the West Midlands and Liverpool.
Since Redstone fell apart in January, however, laying off almost all of its staff following an investigation into the company’s conduct, you’d be hard pushed to find any former staff members with a kind word to say about Brooks. Redstone built up a lucrative business offering skills training courses for people hoping to work on the railways. Local authorities — like the West Midlands Combined Authority or the Liverpool City Region — paid Redstone to put on training programmes designed to turn out skilled rail workers.
The company’s website exudes confidence about the prospects of its trainees (“Engage. Empower. Employ”), boasting of a “proven track record” with “evidence employment outcomes [sic]”. But according to former staff and trainees that we have spoken to, the company was never capable of delivering on the promises it made, leaving people with high hopes for their futures bitterly disappointed – and raising the question of whether vast sums of public money have been wasted in the process.
After numerous attempts to get through to anyone at Redstone this week, we finally received a response to a detailed list of allegations yesterday morning. “We categorically deny all accusations listed below. The points listed are pure fabrication,” the company told us.
