Higher education minister Michell Donelan made a visit to Swindon's New Institute of Technology which opens its doors this autumn.

The institute is hosted in part of New College Swindon's North Star Campus and offered first and master's degree courses in technology and science as well as apprenticeships and professional qualifications.

It has announced it will be running free digital skills courses for working age adults designed to help them increase their skills and find better-paid jobs.

Ms Donelan was particularly pleased with this initiative. She said: "Making sure more people can train and develop at any stage of their life to secure high skilled, high paid jobs is at the heart of our plans.

“These fantastic new courses will open up more training alternatives for adults, address skills gaps in our economy and level up opportunities across the country."

New College Swindon principal Carole Kitching said:“As lead partner of the ground-breaking Swindon and Wiltshire Institute of Technology , New College Swindon is delighted to be able to offer these flexible, free courses to employers.

"We are seeing high demand for these short programmes in digital skills which have been developed in partnership with employers to meet workforce skills gaps and delivered at times to suit our clients. I would encourage interested businesses to contact us as soon as possible for more information as fully funded places are filling up fast. Options include Data Analysis, Cloud Computing, Cyber, Agile Methodologies and DevOps.”

For further information email freeworkskills@newcollege.ac.uk or call 07879 518677.

For further information about the IoT, visit www.sawiot.ac.uk.