Liverpool Community College

With a history stretching back to 1890, Liverpool Community College is one of the UK’s longest-established bakery training schools.

It is the only provider of work-based bakery training on Merseyside and one of the most respected in the north-west of England, working with a wide range of companies providing a flexible range of qualifications, work-based training, and distance and blended learning programmes.

Teaching combines traditional methods with modern innovations covering craft and technical skills, and is delivered both on site at the college and in the workplace.

Training programmes offered include vocational and occupational qualifications in bakery, sugar craft and patisserie, Apprenticeships and bespoke short courses in artisan bread making, sugar art, sugar flowers, designer wedding cakes and chocolate work.

Clients include global bakery products giant CSM, to whom the College delivers Apprenticeships, leading Irish bakery brand McCambridge and high street bakery chains Sayers and Hampson. The College also works with a number of local artisan producers and restaurants offering bespoke training in fermented good and confectionery.

Facilities include a purpose-built commercial bakery at the college’s Duke Street Campus, which opened in 2003. State-of-the-art features include a fully equipped bakery workshop, a patisserie room and an extensive range of sugarcraft and chocolate-making facilities.

A fully staffed bakery shop, food court outlet and silver service restaurant sell bakery and patisserie products made on-site.

Along with other members of the National Skills Academy bakery network, the College has been closely involved in the new industry-standard Professional Bakery course, a groundbreaking programme developed in close collaboration with leading bakery employers.

The College worked  with a steering group of employers representing craft, plant and supermarket bakers to develop training materials and resources for the course, which is intended to provide a broad foundation in core professional bakery skills to people with no hands-on experience in the industry.

In 2010, the college ran a successful pilot of the first four of 10 modules developed for the course involving 50 employees from four bakeries across the north-west.

All training staff at the department are fully qualified craftspeople with extensive experience in the bakery industry in the UK and abroad. All hold either assessor awards or internal verifier awards, and one member of staff has been chosen to represent Great Britain at the prestigious international SIGEP Bread Cup in 2010 and 2011.