Margot James MP has visited a local McDonald’s franchise on Park Road in Cradley to congratulate its apprentices on receiving their certificates.

During the visit Margot met with the apprentices and inspected the work they produced during the 8-12 month apprenticeship in hospitality, which at Level 2 is equivalent to five grade A*-C GCSEs.

Margot also took the opportunity to meet restaurant owner Abdul Sirkhot, and manager David Kilner, who conducted a tour of the restaurant and explained its working practices. Other topics discussed included McDonald’s’ Olympic sponsorship and the impact of last summer’s riots on the restaurant.

The Park Road restaurant opened in 2002 and was recently named Restaurant of the Quarter out of the 121 other restaurants in the Central West region.

Margot said, “I was pleased to offer my congratulations to those apprentices who have completed the course and now received their certificate and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at their work, which seemed to be of a very high standard. It was fantastic to see young people both working and enhancing their skills at the same time. The Park Road restaurant’s performance has been excellent in the past few months, and I look forward to that trend continuing and generating further employment opportunities for young people in Stourbridge.”