WARP Collaboration Saves £150k on Cyber Training

In March 2020, the LGA awarded all local authorities in England £3k to purchase accredited cyber training. The funding was part of the LGA Local Cyber Stocktake funds, with the intention that local authorities would train an individual in their organisation in a recognised course, such as CISM or CISSP.

Individually, for £3k, a local authority can only purchase one CISSP course (depending on the supplier), or two CISM courses. Wanting to do better than this, in collaboration, NW and Y&H WARPs put forward a proposition to pool funding to see if we could be better placed to negotiate better prices on behalf of our membership. NW WARP and Y&H WARP members were invited to pool their grant funding into one pot; in total 24 local authorities responded, providing a pot worth £72k.

The first CISSP training, with 18 participants attended in September. This was a week-long private course aimed at security professionals. In total, three CISSP and one CISM courses have been scheduled, which should result in a total of 72 individuals cyber trained by the end of November 2020. This is a three-fold increase in the expected number of individuals that would have been trained if the funding had been spent individually at local authority level.

Money is left in the pot to cover a further 16 individuals to take other technical cyber security courses, and in addition, we have been offered some free bonuses including: 15 further free training days, 10 online pre-recorded training courses, and 30% of Cloud Academy Licence Courses. These are currently being distributed among the 24 local authorities in the collaboration.