"Putting Customers First" Course.

[whole diary]

[Mookiemoo]

Whereas setting up a specific training facility in Paddington (operated by Network Rail, not FGW^▸ (First Great Western)) is fully deductible, rather than being capital investment? 

Argument is they needed one.  So they put it in paddington.  I thought the argument was over an ADDITIONAL facility elsewhere - or did I miss something

[Chris from Nailsea]

The original poster questioned why the one existing training location was at Paddington, rather than somewhere more 'central' to the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) area - such as Swindon (operated by FGW) or Bristol Temple Meads (oprated by FGW).  Several subsequent members of FGW staff posted in support of that challenge.

However, I'm not FGW staff, so I'm perhaps not qualified to comment. 

[Mookiemoo]

The original poster questioned why the one existing training location was at Paddington, rather than somewhere more 'central' to the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) area - such as Swindon (operated by FGW) or Bristol Temple Meads (oprated by FGW).  Several subsequent members of FGW staff posted in support of that challenge.

However, I'm not FGW staff, so I'm perhaps not qualified to comment. 

what % of FGW staff are based in Swindon/Reading/London/Oxford/south wales/Bristol - in which case day trips are feasible and hence no hotel requirement.  FGW might have control centre at Swindon but to the general public they run paddington - that is their flagship so to speak.

Plymouth/west staff, even at swindon I would guess, would have to still take half a day and overnight. 

Property costs would have been less maybe, but ...

Do FGW use that centre at Paddington for more than just staff training?  Meetings with the gubbermint?  etc etc

There is a reason a lot of companies still have a head office/meeting centre in London rather than more conveniently and cheaper located else where - its because its still a form of status symbol to have such facility in London

[Ollie]

The same floor as the PCF venue has several offices used by management and also our communications team.

[IndustryInsider]

There is oceans of space within the three floors of Macmillan House and the connecting buildings running all the way along platform 1.  Despite wandering the halls many times I think I've only discovered about 5% of it!  Many other FGW^▸ (First Great Western) stations/buildings west of Paddington don't have such luxuries of accommodation - for example, the training rooms at Reading are being taken over by the Reading rebuild - so perhaps for a large, long running course, it was the obvious choice?

[dog box]

The PCF Course does take up quite a large space ,eight rooms if i can remember, and i really cant think of any where else big enough which could have been used centrally as an alternative.