Education
We worked closely with local education business partnerships to develop a range of projects that help local young people understand the range of career opportunities available at Heathrow. This year, we launched the “Heathrow: Careers and Economy” teacher resource pack, providing a wealth of information and classroom activities for local schools. See www.baa.com/education for more information. We supported construction challenges that involved over 1,300 primary and secondary pupils. We began delivering a programme that gives local teachers and careers advisers an insight into airport job opportunities.

Employment
We support two employment projects that help local unemployed residents, many from “hard to reach” groups, to access airport employment:

• Routes to Work, managed by Heathrow City Partnership, which provides customised training and other support for unemployed local residents who want to work in Heathrow’s retail operation
• The Workplace Co-ordinator, who helps residents to access jobs within Heathrow’s construction programmes. The co-ordinator works with a range of local charities, Jobcentre Plus and other agencies to identify potential candidates, prepare them for employment and help them develop their skills once in work.

Together, these projects helped 154 people into work at Heathrow during 2007.

Training
BAA Heathrow’s training programmes went from strength to strength this year. We continued to provide the engineering advanced apprenticeship for our own staff in partnership with Kingston College. We also now deliver a range of nationally-accredited training programmes for other airport companies as part of our Retail Academy. This includes Skills for Life, National Vocational Qualifications, apprenticeships and advanced apprenticeships in a range of subjects, which we deliver in partnership with VT Training, and a foundation degree that is managed in partnership with Thames Valley University.

Our training provisions were inspected by Ofsted in November 2007, which awarded us a “good” rating. We were also runner-up in the Learning and Skill’s Council national apprenticeship employer of the year awards.

This year we continued to support the Heathrow Construction Training Centre, managed by Carillion Construction Training, which provides apprenticeships for more than 100 young people each year.

The training programmes we manage or support helped 230 people gain new qualifications in 2007.

Business support
Heathrow Meet the Buyers celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2007. This annual event helps small to medium-sized businesses meet large companies, local authorities and other public organisations based in and around Heathrow. We also run a series of seminars and training days in the build up to Meet the Buyers to help local companies prepare for the opportunity.

This year’s programme was attended by a total of 474 local companies, with early indications suggesting that participating companies will win business worth more than £6 million.

Issues and approach
Our plans