WRi Academy celebrates its 3rd anniversary

As it celebrates its third anniversary, the team at WRi Academy look back on an extremely successful 2022 and prepare for an even busier and more diverse year ahead.

The Academy’s mission to ‘Achieve excellence through learning together’ has come to fruition over the last 12 months with some 46 training courses being delivered to 668 public sector officers and staff across the UK.

As we all know, for organisations to remain productive and professional, requires staff that are trained and have the knowledge, skills, understanding and ability to carry out their duties to protect the public and represent their organisation.

The breadth of courses provided by the Academy ensures that enforcers are equipped to deal with the myriad of legislation they are responsible to enforce.

Favourite modules amongst our clients are Professional Practice, Intelligence Management, RIPA, Witness Statements, PEACE Interviewing and CPIA Disclosure to name but a few. However, we also offer OSINT, Custody procedures, POCA, and Rules of Evidence.

This year we will be adding a new module on the Enterprise Act, delivered in conjunction with our partners at Gough Square Chambers. This exciting development will ensure that our clients continue to receive the highest level of expertise across the full spectrum of the criminal justice and regulatory system.

The service includes traditional face to face classroom learning as well as online virtual training, with WRi Academy staff designing bespoke training courses, adapted to meet the needs of the client.

The Academy has two experienced trainers in Steve Mogg and Max Davies. Both are retired police officers with over 70 years of law enforcement experience between them.

Steve reached the rank of Detective Superintendent and has experience in Major Crime, Homicide and Safeguarding and Max reached the rank of Chief Inspector with experience in Major Events, Crime Investigation, Public Order and Cyber Crime.

Max also has experience of working overseas training police officers across the world. Both Steve and Max completed the National Police Trainers Course, and both have additional qualifications in the training and development field.

Our training modules are predominantly delivered to Trading Standards Officers across the UK and Northern Ireland, but we have also worked with the Food Standards Agency recently assisting them with Professional Practice Training.

We also provide the training for CTSI in respect of their Investigative and Intelligence Module and have done so for several years.

We have assisted National Trading Standards in Masterclasses regarding Open Source and Online Investigations and Housing Officers across the UK in Intelligence Management via the National Trading Standards Estate and Letting Agency Team.

Every course is different and at WRi we value the feedback that we receive from those we train to ensure that we can improve and develop our courses to meet the needs of participants.

In terms of feedback it has been very positive and some quotes we have had inspire, and drive us forward knowing that we have made a difference and helped to improve performance in a number of areas. This feedback is important for the client as well and it is pleasing to see that those we have trained before keep coming back.

‘Thank you so much for the training, I learnt a great deal and all the detail was described well. The trainer’s knowledge was immense.’

‘Very informative refresher with interesting case studies and a lecturer who knows his subject inside out.’

“Enjoyed the course – Steve is very knowledgeable and was nice to have a refresher since completing DCATs courses. Well done thank you.”

These quotes say it all! We always aim to deliver the highest quality training and we are passionate about what we do. We are very much investigators as well as trainers, so we still practice what we train, supporting our colleagues at WRi Group, and we believe that this is what makes us different to other training providers.

‘’Being practitioners, we understand the nature of investigations and what is required to prove a case and prepare it for court’’ says Lead Trainer Steve Mogg.

‘’We get inspired by the training we deliver and the learning that we also get from our courses. The participants on these courses come from a wide range of backgrounds and specialisms and when you put that together, with the training from WRi, you will get further development, which can only enhance the professionalism and performance of your teams’’.

At WRI we will always put the practical aspect into our courses as that is what we all need as investigators, how to use the legislation in our day to day work. There is clearly a need for such an approach as evidenced by the following feedback.

“I have read and researched widely and attended training at my own expense but found yours to be the first ever to address some of the more pithy practicalities of the process.”

“One thing that struck me was that in addition to presenting the legislative and procedural facts you also took some time to address the points that other courses have failed to do in relation to the more practical aspects, one of which for me in particular is the Relevance Test.”

“The Training was very insightful and gave me an understanding of the RIPA, PACE and PEACE models. This will now nicely set me up to solidify my learning after completing my PIP training. Both Steve and Max had a vast amount of experience, and they were very thorough and patient throughout the delivery of the training.”

WRi Academy staff are happy to work with you to deliver the best possible training for your teams. If you want to find out more then please visit our website www.wri-group.com/academy  or to discuss any aspect of training, please do not hesitate to contact us on enquiries@wri-group.com

We look forward to working with you soon.