Eastwood Park, the long-established engineering, estates, and facilities management training centre, this year celebrates 50 years of delivering training.
On its private 200-acre Gloucestershire estate, Eastwood Park has hosted trainee engineers, managers, and directors in their formative years, and many now work in healthcare services worldwide. Since the 1960s many hospital engineers and estates personnel have started their apprenticeship training at the centre. The Grade II Victorian country house and estate was owned by the Home Office during WWII, and later the Police, prior to being handed over to the NHS. Today Eastwood Park is independently owned, following a successful management buyout 16 years ago, when the company further developed to attract local and corporate events business to maximise the potential of the estate when training was not scheduled.
With new water, health and safety, and medical equipment courses on its latest scheduled training calendar, to be launched this month, Eastwood Park is currently ‘undergoing further transformation’. The main house is in the midst of a refurbishment, with phase one to be completed mid-year, while a new purpose-built training centre on the estate, to eventually replace the existing specialist learning facilities, is under development.
CEO, John Thatcher, said: “We are delighted to be marking our 50th year with 12 months of significant change and development to continually improve the expert training we deliver. I have the pleasure of leading a dedicated team of staff and associates, without whose expertise and support we would not be where we are today.”
