Equity firm saves driving school group and 400 jobs

RED Driving School group has been rescued out of administration in a move that safeguards some 400 jobs.

LVG, which owns Red Driving School and Red Instructor Training, has been bought by private equity firm Kelso Place, which has previously backed the Smythson luxury stationery brand.

The deal secures the future of the Red brand and Kelso said yesterday it had no plans for redundancies.

Red Driving School is the third largest in the UK, while the group's instructor training division is the biggest in Europe, with a network of 22 colleges.

Brighton-based LVG also owns Red Fleet Training, as well as driving instructor accountancy service FBTC, a trade magazine for the driving instructor training industry called ABI News, and Practical Driver Instructor Aids.

Kelso said it made a "significant equity investment" in securing the deal – said to be worth several million pounds.

The driving school group collapsed last week due to funding woes, although administrator MCR stressed at the time that accounts suggested the business was "quite a healthy and profitable operation".

Philip Weston, a partner at Kelso, said it planned to grow LVG following the takeover.

LVG was launched in 1992 and its workforce is spread across three sites – its head office in Brighton, as well as offices in Liverpool and in Billingham, near Middlesbrough. It has annual revenues of about 40 million.