The head of organisational development and training at a Shropshire Business Improvement consultancy has warned that this week's report of an "acute shortage" of funding for 'Train for Gain', the Government's biggest skills programme, will encourage even more employers to just pay "lip service" to training.

Ellen Morley, Principal of The Business Company in Shrewsbury, says a survey by her company to look at business challenges and priorities shows that many small business owners across the Midlands are already failing to provide adequate training for their staff and management teams and have no plans to do so in the next twelve months.

"Over 200 small and medium sized businesses took part in the study," she says, "which revealed that whilst many understood the need for training only a quarter of them had a training policy in place, and less than a fifth had a specific training budget allocated to staff development. Additionally, only one in ten companies acknowledged "people investment" and "staff development" as a business priority for next year."

"The main priority of many of the businesses we surveyed," says Ms Morley, "was "increased sales and turnover" followed by "expansion and development" as soon as the country starts to climb out of recession. But the irony of this is that the only way companies can effectively expand and develop is by maximising the potential of their staff and management through training and development programmes - and those need to be in place now if those businesses are to survive the short term and be ready for the upturn in the economy when it arrives."

The shortage of Government funding for the Train for Gain programme was highlighted in a report published this week by the Association of Learning Providers. It said many employers were not able to access new publicly funded training provision for an entire 12-month period "at a critical time in the economy".