News & Updates

Safety Training Awards has further strengthened its team by internally promoting three members of staff to heads of departments. The newly created roles for Louise Bangham, Kaylë Burgham and Claire Lowbridge demonstrate Safety Training Awards’ commitment to providing a dedicated, compliant and robust level of service to approved training centres (ATCs) and STA members.

Introducing Safety Training Awards’ three new heads of departments:

Louise Bangham
Head of Compliance and Assurance

Louise Bangham has moved to Head of Compliance and Assurance, which is a pivotal position as she will be responsible for making sure Safety Training Awards is compliant with all the relevant regulators’ requirements and conditions. In this role, Louise will liaise with the regulators, external stakeholders and ATCs to ensure the delivery and assessment of Safety Training Awards’ qualifications are robust and promote regulatory confidence, while considering the needs of customers.

Louise not only brings compliance expertise to this role, she is also highly qualified and experienced in customer relations; a skill she feels is essential for this job as it does require communicating important, and sometimes difficult information to everyone involved in the organisation; colleagues, members, external stakeholders and regulators.

Looking ahead, Louise is very excited about the recent changes made within Safety Training Awards and the ATC model. She said: While I understand that some of the regulatory decisions being imposed have been difficult for some members, I know that with our continued support and once the model has been embedded, our members will see the positive impact it will have on the STA regulated qualifications they are delivering within their centres.

Personally, I am also very excited about taking on this new role, and being part of a team that can make a real difference in the world of aquatics and lifesaving—together we have a great future ahead of us.

Kaylë Burgham
Head of Qualification Development

Kaylë Burgham has been promoted to Head of Qualification Development. This is an important job role which requires Kaylë to oversee the development and maintenance of all Safety Training Awards’ regulated qualifications and CPDs—the mainstay of the organisation.

Having been the Technical Manager for Aquatics at STA for 5 years, which led to becoming Head of Aquatics after successfully developing the Baby & Pre-School Diploma and Open Water Swimming Coaching qualifications, Kaylë brings lots of experience to this role. Using her skills and industry knowledge, Kaylë will ensure all STA qualifications are of a high standard and fit for purpose in line with both employer and modern learner needs.

Kaylë said: I am very proud of our aquatics qualification portfolio, from the Diploma to Open Water Swimming and more recently the development of the new Level 2 Teaching Swimming qualifications. With hard work, a great team and fantastic partners, we have developed qualifications that are of the highest quality and standards. In my new role, I will be using this experience to work with learned colleagues who are all highly regarded technical specialists in their own respective fields, to further develop Safety Training Awards’ suite of qualifications.

Claire Lowbridge
Head of Centre Management

Claire Lowbridge, who has been with STA for 14 years working across several departments, has become the new Head of Centre Management. Claire takes charge of Safety Training Awards’ centre management team who are responsible for account managing and supporting ATCs. Each member of the team provides a dedicated point of contact for ATCs, and in Claire’s new role she will use her experience and knowledge to make sure the department provides a high quality and expert level of service in line with the awarding organisation’s compliance requirements.

Claire said she is really looking forward to taking on the challenge: Our customer-facing role within Safety Training Awards is very important; we are the first line of contact for ATCs and we want to ensure their customer experience is the best it can be in terms of support and advice.

This promotion also means a lot to me personally; after working here for 14 years it’s lovely to know that my expertise is valued and I can help with pushing STA to the next level within the industry. It’s very exciting.

Claire Brisbourne, Safety Training Awards’ Director of Awarding Organisation, added: I am absolutely delighted that Louise, Kaylë and Claire have been internally promoted to these very important positions within the awarding organisation. Individually, they bring a vast amount of knowledge and experience to their respective roles, and I’m looking forward to working with them as we grow and further develop Safety Training Awards.