Hi. We're Heather and Tim Sawyer, co-founders and Directors of HTS Training, the First Aid and Mental Health First Aid Training specialists based in Bedford. Along with our team of expert trainers, we work really hard to be the best first aid training company out there.

We work really hard to make our courses so good that your first aiders ask for us by name. So good that they'll want to come back year after year to train with us, not just anyone. And so good that they'll come away from their course so engaged and enthused that they'll remember everything they were taught, and will be able to call on it in an instant.

And we work really hard to make your customer service experience so easy that you won't want to deal with anyone else. So easy that you won't have to worry about renewal dates - just ask for a report, and we'll send you one. Lost your certificates? We'll send you digital copies. Want a specific date, time or location? We'll do everything we can to accommodate your needs.

So you may be thinking - all this service doesn't come cheap, right? Well, we're certainly not the lowest cost. But then you wouldn't want your first aiders trained by the cheapest trainers, would you? In the same way that you wouldn't recruit the lowest cost staff to fill your key roles. Or take a bungee jump attached to the cheapest cord. Or a skydive attached to the cheapest 'chute (you get the idea!).

But our courses are great value. We're significantly lower cost than the national brands. And when you add in our level of service and the quality of our courses, it's a combination that's really hard to beat.

If you'd like to know a bit more about about us to help you decide, please read on. Or you can hit the button below and ask us a question. We'll always be delighted to help.

How Do I Choose A Training Company?

While you're hunting around for a first aid training provider, you probably ask yourself questions such as:

"Who are the best first aid trainers to go with? What's the difference between the hundreds of different companies out there? Should I pay a premium to go with St John Ambulance or with the Red Cross? Should I go with a company offering regulated qualifications, or one who makes no mention of Ofqual?

And what about those companies who say they have thousands of trainers and thousands of training centres? And those who always seem to have every date available. Is all that even possible?"

Well, we can't answer all of those questions for you, but we can tell you about ourselves, and hope that that helps you to make up your own mind.

What Makes Us Unique

Owner-Managed

We're an owner-managed, specialist First Aid and Mental Health First Aid training company.  We (Heather and Tim) launched HTS at the beginning of 2010, and we continue to manage all operations today. Heather runs some of the training courses, and manages the team of 26 who run all of the others. Tim manages all of the back-office operations which help your courses run as smoothly as possible.

What that means for you is that you have a hugely-experienced, registered nurse and expert first aid trainer recruiting all trainers, managing quality control and making sure that all standards and latest best-practise are followed to the letter.

It also means that you have direct access to the owners when you have any special requests, want to ask a question or make a complaint.

A Customer Service Provider

And because we're so hands-on, we can make sure that you get the very best customer service from us and our trainers. So:

• we'll only agree a training date with you when we know one of our trainers is available to run it for you
• your price won't include any last-minute surprises
• you can be confident that the trainer running your course is suitably qualified and is highly rated both by us and by our other clients (so much so that you'll no doubt want them back next time!)
• any issues or problems you have will be dealt with by us, the owners, and not lost in the inbox of the customer services or legal department of a training brokerage.

Regulated Qualifications

The Workplace courses we run (Emergency First Aid, First Aid at Work) and our Paediatric First Aid courses are regulated qualifications. In a nutshell, that means that we have to be 'top-notch' in quality terms to maintain our licence to run the courses (via Qualsafe Awards and First Aid Awards (Nuco) two of the largest Awarding Organisations). That gives you the assurances you need that you're learning from a quality, bona-fide training provider.

Our Pricing

We'll give you an individual quote which includes all costs and no surprises, so that you know how much it's going to cost you before you book. And our prices are significantly lower than those of the national brands (often up to 40% lower), too.

Our Accreditations

Of course you'll want to know that we have all of the right accreditations, keep on top of our professional development and train to latest best practices. Because you know that it means you'll get the best possible training. Well, that's crucial to us too. We want to be the best first aid trainers out there, and to give you the confidence that you're making the right choice when you book with us.

So you'll be pleased to hear that we're an accredited centre for Qualsafe Awards and for the FAA (through Nuco), two of the largest Awarding Organisations out there. Our trainers are regularly desk-audited and go through face-to-face monitoring. Heather, our Director of Training and herself a Registered General Nurse (RGN) and professional member of the Anaphylaxis Campaign, reviews the latest best practice and attends the important industry seminars so that she can make sure that all our trainers are kept up-to-date.

What Our Customers Say...

Our Journey

We launched the business together in early 2010. Heather had already been training first aid for many years, firstly as a volunteer with St John Ambulance and later for independent organisations. Several years earlier she had parted company with the NHS, having become frustrated with the paperwork, loss of patient contact and limited budget that her move into clinical services management had brought upon her.

Tim meanwhile had spent years living out of hotel rooms, first helping companies to put in new computer systems to manage their businesses and later running customer services teams to help them to get the most from their investments.

Both of us felt that starting our own company would enable us to serve our customers and communities better, while having a more balanced home and family life.

And so HTS Training was born.

Since we started

Starting in February 2010, it was the April before we hired a church hall to run our inaugural Bedford first aid course. We wanted to make sure that everything was perfect for all our customers. (That's something I hadn't mentioned before - we're both perfectionists!).

Each year, we've welcomed more and more new clients, and have trained more people in how to save lives. We still run lots of first aid courses in Bedford (both onsite and public ones), but now cover a wide area across the rest of the UK too. If you're not sure whether we'll come out to your premises to train - just ask!

We've been determined at all stages that ours would be the best trainers, and that we'd deliver the best courses for clients - something that has earned us an average of more than 97% customer satisfaction across all courses, for the entire time since we started.

And that perfectionism that I mentioned - that's what drives us to check every piece of feedback, to improve every area of training and the wider business, and ultimately to give you the very best courses that we can.

We hope you'll join us, and will learn how to act quickly, confidently and correctly to improve outcomes and save lives of those around you at work, at home and in your wider communities.

Meet Our Team

Co-founders Heather and Tim

The Training Team

As well as leading our team of excellent trainers, Heather is a highly-experienced trainer in her own right. She runs up to 150 courses each year, and is always in high demand.

She's also hand-picked our other trainers, who come from a range of backgrounds: nursing, other medical, emergency services, military and professional education. What they all have in common is fantastic knowledge, an engaging manner and an ability to get first aid information across in a way that candidates really understand and remember.

We don't claim to have thousands of trainers, or thousands of training centres... we don't. We wouldn't be able to make sure that you get the best quality courses if we did. But our close-knit band is also the reason why so many of our customers ask for our trainers by name, year after year.