Franchise questions

The licence fee covers your territory grant, the train the trainer pathway through to sign off, our quality assurance framework, the full set of course documentation and templates, help setting the centre up, onboarding onto our systems, and mentoring through your first year. It excludes VAT.

It does not include your equipment, your sites, your launch marketing or your working capital. Those are the other lines in the investment table.

The typical total is £67,500 to £87,500 excluding VAT. Beyond the licence it covers four things: an equipment pack, setting up practical sites, launch marketing, and working capital for your first months.

Only the licence fee is fixed. The rest is a range because it depends on how much kit you already own, what sites you can get access to in your area, and what your region costs to market in. We work through the real numbers for your situation during onboarding rather than quoting you an average.

Whoever delivers the training needs to hold the technical certificates for the courses they teach. Our train the trainer pathway develops your instructing, it does not replace the tickets themselves.

Whether that person has to be you, or can be a qualified trainer you employ, is worth a conversation, because it changes how your centre is staffed and what your first year looks like. Tell us your situation and we will give you a straight answer.

No, you do not need to own land. Site sourcing support is part of what you get, along with the safety documentation and help with initial site preparation, and there is a budget line for it in the investment table.

What you do need is access to sites in your territory that are suitable and can be risk assessed properly before each course.

Yes. Plenty of the people this suits already run arb or grounds maintenance crews, and a centre both trains their own teams and opens a second income stream.

The thing to talk about is time. Delivering a five day course means five days not on the tools, so the practical question is who covers that. Better answered before you commit than after.

Six to eight weeks from starting, if things run to plan. Weeks one and two are induction, systems and insurance. Weeks three to five are train the trainer and shadowing our delivery. Week six is sign off. Your first live course dates fall between weeks six and eight.

Marketing switches on from week four, so enquiries are building before you open.

A management service fee of 8% of net training revenue, a marketing contribution of 3% of net revenue with a minimum of £500 a month, and £250 a month for systems. All excluding VAT.

Insurance, exam fees and venue or site costs sit outside those figures and are yours. We plan them with you during onboarding.

The initial term is five years, with five year renewal options after that. Renewal depends on your performance, your compliance record and a renewal fee.

The renewal fee is set in the agreement rather than published here. Ask us and you will have it in writing well before you sign anything.

Yes, with our approval and a standard transfer fee. Approval is about making sure whoever takes it on can hold the standards, because their delivery carries our name.

The transfer fee is set out in the agreement rather than published here.

We do not provide finance ourselves, and we are not authorised to give financial advice.

What we can do is set out the investment and the fee structure in writing, so you have something concrete to take to your accountant or a lender. Whether borrowing suits your circumstances is their judgement, not ours.

Inside your territory, no other Great Oaks centre advertises or runs scheduled public courses from the core syllabus. That is what exclusivity covers.

Cross boundary corporate bookings work differently. If a national contractor wants the same training in four regions, we coordinate it centrally and allocate the work, so you are never bidding against another Great Oaks centre for the same customer.

This is the question every trainer asks, and it deserves a real answer rather than a reassuring one.

How under-filled dates are handled, what the minimum viable numbers are on each course, and what happens to a date you have to move, are things we work through with you during onboarding using our own booking history. Ask on the call and we will show you how it actually plays out in Preston rather than quoting you a policy.

Great Oaks is a City and Guilds approved assessment centre, so assessment is something we do rather than buy in. To be clear about the wording, because people in the industry are: assessment centre approval is the only approval there is. Nobody holds approval to deliver training, ourselves included. Your course documentation includes guidance on scheduling and completing NPTC assessments.

Exactly how assessment is resourced in your territory, whether that is our assessors travelling to you or a route we build with you, is part of the onboarding conversation. It depends on your region and on your own qualifications.

Mentoring runs through the whole first year as part of the licence.

Alongside it: national campaigns and SEO with your own centre page and calendar, monthly content, and enquiries in your territory routed to you with a 24 hour response standard.

On quality, two audits a year, quarterly peer reviews and a minimum of two CPD days, with pass rates and learner feedback tracked and an improvement plan agreed if anything slips. Tomas Dewey observes your early delivery and gives you direct feedback.