For grant assessors, lenders & partners
The plan, in full. Nothing to chase.
If you are assessing a grant application, considering a lending relationship or exploring partnership, this page sets out the model, governance and impact case behind Clwydian Academy — and how to request the full business plan and supporting documents directly.
Business Plan — August 2026
Full plan, monthly cash model and 25% stress tests · shared on request with funders, lenders and assessors
The plan contains commercially sensitive modelling, so we share it directly rather than publish it. Requests from funders, lenders and grant assessors are answered the same day — please include your organisation and the programme or facility you are assessing.
Our mission
Rebuild the route into a skilled trade — fast, bilingual, and owned by the community it serves.
Clwydian Academy CBC exists because the trade’s training pipeline collapsed: apprenticeship starts down around 70% in a decade, 92% of salons unable to take on an apprentice, and salons closing across Denbighshire, Flintshire and the border counties. We train apprentices who stay employed in their salons, take adults from no experience to NVQ Level 2 in six months rather than two years, and run CPD that makes a skill chargeable in a week — in Welsh and English, with interest-free instalments and no credit checks. We are an asset-locked Community Interest Company: every surplus is reinvested in training people from this community, and that lock is constitutional, not a promise.
Doors open on a lean build
VTCT Approved Centre application in progress; unaccredited CPD masterclasses from December 2026; Cohort One of ten begins February 2027; free bilingual taster sessions across Flintshire and Denbighshire.
The training department salons lost
Funded apprenticeship delivery under an approved lead provider: the salon pays the wage, Wales’s fully funded system pays for the training. Salon partners are signing now.
What we are working towards
Medr’s new Welsh Apprenticeship Programme starts in August 2027, and its provider commissioning documents publish in September 2026 — the most important funding document of our first year. This plan is sequenced so the academy is accredited, staffed and evidenced when that round opens.
Fair funding for this trade
Hairdressing is not on the Personal Learning Account priority list, so no academy can honestly offer PLA-funded places today. We are making the sector’s case to change that — and building the bilingual, hybrid delivery that funded adult places will need.
Figures are drawn from the August 2026 business plan: a cohort-anchored monthly cash model stress-tested to a 25% income shock, with commitment-gated costs, a named Development Bank of Wales standby, and capital firewalled from revenue asks. The full plan and pre-answered due-diligence questions are available on request above.
Governance
Built to be audited.
- Constitutional asset lock on the CIC; surpluses reinvested in the mission
- Independent director on the board and bank mandate; dual unrelated signatories — met before any funder asked
- Complete legal and financial separation from the founders’ commercial interests: no grant income reaches any related company, and any service arrangement is written, at arm’s length, approved only by non-conflicted directors
- Community purpose regulated by the CIC Regulator and disclosed annually in a public CIC34 report
- VTCT Approved Centre application in progress (engagement opened June 2026); assessment and internal quality assurance lawfully separated from day one through a contracted independent IQA
Due diligence
Ask us the hard questions.
The plan was written downside-first: a monthly cash model stress-tested to a 25% income shock — and to losing its largest grant on top — with commitment-gated costs, a named Development Bank of Wales standby and capital firewalled from revenue asks. Supporting models, cost sheets and policy documentation are available to assessors on request.
Mark Parker, Chief Executive Officer · markp@charlotteeleanorgroup.uk