York businesses have awarded a gold star to North Yorkshire Training and Enterprise Council.

As many as 1,200 businesses in the city used a North Yorkshire TEC service in the last financial year - and 99 per cent of them gave the organisation top marks for providing exactly the advice and help they needed.

The figures are listed in the TEC's annual report due out in time for four public meetings in North Yorkshire.

The meetings, in York, Northallerton, Scarborough and Harrogate on July 20, 21, 22 and 23 respectively, will be forums to discuss and question the TEC's performance in more detail and to learn about what is on offer.

Among the TEC achievements listed for York at these meetings will be -

Help for more than 900 young people in the York area to start on NVQ Options or Modern Apprenticeship schemes on which young people train and qualify while working. More than seven out of ten young people had full-time jobs with their employers during their training period

Help for nearly 550 adults in York who had been jobless for more than six months to train and update their skills while working on placement with employers. Around half attained jobs as a result.l Encouragement of adults back into training. The TEC's freephone advice line, "learning helpline", took calls from 4,949 people who were interested in going on courses form pleasure or to help them with their work.

Another 26,000 people used special computers in libraries and information centres to find out about courses and 6,900 inquiries were made at information and advice centres for personal advice on training opportunities.

Helping to fund an extra 250 childcare places for children aged between five and 12 to go to after school and during holidays - helping many parents to return to work.

Roger Grasby, chief executive of North Yorkshire TEC, said: "We have to look at our performance figures this year against a backdrop of cuts in funding for most of the programmes.

"Despite this, we have helped almost exactly the same numbers of individuals and businesses as last year. And we still continue to receive top scores by those using our services."

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