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Career Development Grants are loans for skill improvement courses.
Government Career Development Loans in the UK.
A Career Development Loan or CDL can be used to fund a learning course that will improve your existing job skills or even launch you on a new one. Career Development Loans are a government initiative but they do not fund the scheme directly. If you are a graduate you should also investigate Graduate Loans.
To be eligible for a Career Development Loan you must be 18 or over and a resident of England, Scotland or Wales, with unlimited rights to stay in one of these countries. You must also intend to work in any European Union country, Iceland, Norway or Liechtenstein. You may not qualify for a CDL if you can easily afford to pay for it yourself or are capable of getting a normal student-loan.
You can borrow from £300 to £8,000 which can be used for course fees, books and equipment etc. and some living expenses. If you are looking for a Career Development Loan bank, only the Co-operative Bank, Barclays Bank, and the Royal Bank of Scotland currently offer Career Development Loans. It does not matter whether you take out a Co-op Career Development Loan or one from another bank, it is a personal loan and you will be responsible to the bank for repayments: do not embark on this action unless you have a very good chance of benefiting from it. However, you will not be expected to start repaying the loan until at least one month after finishing the course.
The loan will be for a fixed period of up to 2 years' in duration but can be extended to 3 years if the course includes up to 1 year of practical work experience. If your chosen course takes longer than this you may still be able to use a CDL to fund part of it. The interest rate will be fixed and agreed at the start of the loan period. Like all personal loans, your credit rating will be taken into account when applying for a Career Development Loan.
Some Courses are Not Eligible.
Not all courses can be funded by a CDL. The course you take is meant to lead directly to employment, and is not for intermediate stages. For example: purchasing franchises, careers information courses, or a foundation course leading to a degree would be disallowed or subjected to restrictions of some sort. However, any stand-alone course that leads directly to employment should be perfectly acceptable.
You Must Apply to a Registered Learning Provider.
Only approved and accredited providers of your chosen course can be used. A list of approved providers can be seen by following this link.
Career Development Loan repayment to the lending bank must be made in full, even if you fail to complete the course for any reason. Always check with the course provider what their refund policy is in case of unforseen circumstances, such as illness. Please also understand that the LSC (Learning Skills Council) and the bank (the loan provider) do not make checks on the courses or approve the learning provider. It is entirely up to you to ensure that the course you choose is suitable for your needs and that any qualifications gained are worthwhile! Just because the course is from an approved provider, it does not guarantee quality or that it reaches any sort of national or universally accepted standard. In other words it is vital that you choose the right course from the right learning provider. It is entirely up to you to do this! If you fail in this respect you could be encumbering yourself with worthless debt.
Providing that you follow the above guidelines, particularly that the course you enrol for is of an appropriate high standard, a Career Development Loan can be a good investment. Not all college courses are worthwhile; many are there to fill gaps in the syllabus and their quality is only as good as the available lecturer. However, this mainly applies to college courses that lead to a diploma rather than examinations set to national standards or those from a good university. It is important to understand this difference.
You can find details here how to obtain an information pack and application forms.