Custom WordPress build for The Links Training & Consultancy — an independent consultancy run by Emma Khan, helping Health & Social Care employers access funded training through LDSS, apprenticeships, commercial programmes, and Oliver McGowan mandatory training.
Emma Khan runs The Links Training & Consultancy — an independent consultancy helping Health & Social Care employers access funded training through the LDSS Funding Scheme, apprenticeships, commercial programmes, and Oliver McGowan mandatory training. Emma's value is her expertise and her network — she navigates a complex funding landscape on behalf of care providers who don't have time to do it themselves.
The brief: a credible, professional consultancy site that signals expertise the moment it loads. Health & Social Care employers researching funding options need to trust the consultant they're engaging with — this is regulated work, audit-trail work, statutory-funding-application work. The site needed to read like the consultant it represents: experienced, knowledgeable, trustworthy.
Beyond brand and credibility: dedicated pages for each funding stream (LDSS, apprenticeships, commercial training, Oliver McGowan), a 43-programme curated apprenticeship list with Skills England search integration, Level 2 courses delivered via Learning Curve Group, and a contact flow that captures the right qualifying information for an enquiry to be useful.
Every Mako Digital case study includes a complete build specification — the actual technical decisions that made the project what it is.
Every Mako Digital build follows a documented approach — consistent across every project, calibrated to each client’s industry, brand, and customer journey.
The visual language is calibrated to the audience — care home managers, NHS commissioners, local authority leads, and HR directors making funded-training decisions. Magenta and navy as the primary palette, Fraunces serif for editorial weight, Lexend for clean readability. The result is a site that reads as professional, regulated, and authoritative without tipping into corporate or stuffy.
Health & Social Care employers don't search for "training consultant" — they search for "LDSS funding application", "Oliver McGowan training provider", or "Care Certificate apprenticeship". Each funding stream gets its own dedicated page with its own content depth, eligibility guidance, and application route. A care home manager researching the LDSS Funding Scheme lands on the LDSS page; an NHS trust looking for Oliver McGowan training lands on the OM page. Right page, right context, right next step.
Apprenticeships are a major funding stream in Health & Social Care. We integrated a curated list of 43 apprenticeship programmes Emma works with, plus search functionality that pulls from Skills England's programme database. Visitors can browse Emma's curated picks or search the wider Skills England catalogue from within the site. Genuine value, genuine differentiation, genuine reason to enquire.
Oliver McGowan training is a specific, named, in-demand search term following the legal mandate. We built a dedicated page for it with proper schema, comprehensive content, and clear application routes. The page is built to rank for "Oliver McGowan training" and the variants — a specific commercial intent that drives qualified enquiries.
Hosted on Hostinger, built on WordPress, no proprietary platform. Emma owns the site outright after handover — no platform lock-in, no monthly fees. As funding schemes evolve, as new programmes are added, as the Skills England catalogue updates, Emma manages content through the WordPress admin without coming back to the agency.
If we wouldn’t put it on our own business, we wouldn’t put it on yours.The Mako Digital Standard
The Links Training & Consultancy Case Study: Mako Digital designed and built a custom WordPress website for The Links Training & Consultancy, health & social care training and funding consultancy based in UK-wide. The build delivered a bespoke theme coded from scratch, full schema markup, complete local SEO setup, and a Google Search Console-verified launch.
The The Links Training project sits within Mako Digital’s portfolio of bespoke WordPress builds — the same standards-led approach we apply to every client across Wigan borough and the wider North West. See our Web Design for Training Providers Wigan page for the full service breakdown, or visit the case study archive for more examples.
The Links took our higher-tier custom WordPress build at £999+ given the scope — multiple funding-stream pages, a 43-programme apprenticeship directory with Skills England search integration, and dedicated pages for each commercial training partnership. Full local SEO, EducationalOrganization schema, GSC verification all included. No add-on fees, no monthly retainer.
Four weeks from initial brief to live site. The apprenticeship directory and Skills England search integration added complexity beyond a standard 5-page build, but the timeline reflects properly individualised content across all four funding streams.
Self-hosted, fully owned, complete editorial control. Health & Social Care funding schemes change — LDSS rules update, apprenticeship standards evolve, Oliver McGowan training requirements get refined. Emma needs to be able to update the site as quickly as the policy landscape moves. WordPress gives her that. A pay-monthly platform like Squarespace would lock her into perpetual fees and slower update cycles.
LDSS (Local Government Workforce Development Fund) is a Department for Education-administered fund that supports training in adult social care. Care providers can access funded training across qualifications, mandatory training, and CPD. Navigating LDSS applications requires expertise — what Emma at The Links does for clients. The dedicated LDSS page on the site explains the scheme and Emma's consultancy role in helping employers access it.
The Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism is mandatory training under the Health and Care Act 2022 for all health and social care staff. It's named after Oliver McGowan, whose death highlighted the urgent need for better training. Emma at The Links is a consultant in the Oliver McGowan space, helping employers source and deliver compliant training. The dedicated page on the site is built to rank for this specific, named search term.
Yes — consultancies, training providers, educational organisations, and any business where credibility and expertise are the primary product. The Links Training is the worked example for funding-consultancy web design; OccuTeach is the worked example for occupational training providers; Upskillz is the worked example for accredited course providers.
Across Wigan borough and the wider North West. The cluster network covers 19 towns — see the full coverage map at /web-design-near-me/. Other recent builds include OccuTeach (Bristol), The Links Training (Wigan), and Resolve Recruitment (Bristol & Wigan).
Yes — visit thelinkstraining.co.uk to see the funding-stream pages, the apprenticeship directory, and the full live site. Emma takes enquiries from Health & Social Care employers UK-wide.
If the The Links Training build is the kind of work that fits your business, these are the closest peers in our portfolio — same custom-WordPress approach, different industries.
Custom consultancy WordPress builds from £999+. Same approach as the The Links Training build — multiple service streams, integrated directories, fully owned outright.
