- Liz Farmer, Lettings Manager

The Wolverhampton Academy Trust sponsor South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy and North East Wolverhampton Academy. Both Academies are part of Wolverhampton’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy has been completely rebuilt and North East Wolverhampton Academy's refurbishment programme was completed in September 2014.

Once the building work had been completed at each site, the Academy Trust had a vision of a thriving community use programme during the evenings and weekends. Working in partnership with the Local Education Partnership (LEP), Inspire, Kajima Community delivered a detailed feasibility study to explore the possible community use opportunities within the locality of South Wolverhampton and Bilston Academy.

Following on from this study, the Academy Trust commissioned Kajima Community to support them in setting up and delivering a community use operation. It was important to the Academy Trust that once the new facilities were ready for use at both sites, they were visible via the internet to the whole community. The BookingsPlus marketing websites enables the academies to promote their new facilities, attract hirers and share the activities schedule with the local community.

In addition, BookingsPlus provides the academies with a robust and efficient school-specific booking system, ensuring that Academy staff are not undertaking labour-intensive processes.

As the system is web-based, staff can respond to enquiries, make bookings, generate invoices and take payments anywhere at any time making it a flexible and portable tool.Alongside the software implementation, a training programme, delivered by Kajima, was put in place to provide the Trust lettings team with specialist training in the marketing, administration and operation of community use.

The Academy Trust continue to use the software and benefit from the increases in income and efficiency.