A NEW era is dawning for Colchester Institute’s hospitality and food studies centre.

Work is well under way, in partnership with a number of different organisations, to create the country’s first boutique training hotel on the site of the former Wivenhoe Hotel – cementing the college’s reputation as one of the top five establishments of its kind in the country.

New head of the centre, Jon Pratt, 55, who took over about six months ago, is up for the challenges ahead.

You could say he is tailor made for the position – his passion for the profession and top qualifications are second to none, but it is clear he is also a people person.

He has been watching with interest the BBC2 series Service, in which world-famous chef Michel Roux is on a personal mission to train eight young people as front-of-house restaurant superstars.

Jon said: “I know a lot of the places he has taken them to, and is training them in, as I had to work at a lot of them when I was working at Westminster College, before I came here.

“I think this sort of TV programme is important because it shows service is a skill and it is something you have to work at.

“It is about smiling and engaging with the customer and working as a team.

“In service, you are sort of a performer, on a stage. There are so many skills going on in serving meals – it is all a skill.”

This is what students will be taught at the forthcoming hotel school.

He said: “It is very much Essex University and us working together. We are behind the delivery, in other words we deliver the training to the learners, who are degree students, and support them with the technical skills of running the hotel.”

Jon, 55, is no stranger to setting up training centres and he is also no stranger to hard work.

When he was young his father was in the Army, so he moved around a lot and then went to boarding school.

He said: “A lot of people say it wasn’t for them, but I loved it.

“When I went to visit my dad he would take me out on exercise with the soldiers and I would have a week of training.

“It didn’t put me off the Army, I just did not go in that direction.”

But his career path demanded similar discipline and application. After leaving school, he trained at the Savoy as a commis chef.

He said: “I earned £14 a week and they were brutally honest. They knew the most important thing I would get out of it would be the ability to use their name to further myself, and I had to go through a rigorous process to get the place there.”

He then plied his trade at a number of large hotels in Bournemouth, before becoming head chef at a 13th Century pub restaurant which was selected in the Good Food Guide.

But in 1980, he returned to college full time, in West Sussex, and then started work as a lecturer, before moving to West Kent College, in Tonbridge.

Never one to back away from a challenge, he bought a pub in Worthing, but maintained the educational side of things by working a couple of days a week at the nearby college.

Later, Jon was invited to work at London’s Westminster Kingsway College, which involved setting up contacts with a number of top restaurants, such as the Ritz, Savoy and Carluccio’s, which invited him to set up a cooks school, whisking him off to Italy, India and Beijing on fact-finding missions. This experience has stood the dad-of-two in good stead for his role in north Essex, which he commutes to on a weekly basis from his family home in Sussex.

His passion for Colchester Institute is obvious and he is clearly very hands on.

Heading into the college’s Colne Restaurant, one of two such restaurants the students run themselves as part of their training, everyone he passes welcomes him warmly and he greets them by name.

Jon added: “I have always wanted to be hands on. That is very important, everyone should know me and I should know them. It is an amazingly successful centre and everyone plays their role.

“There is as much pressure, if not more, in taking over an establishment that is already one of the top five as you have to make sure you take it forward and maintain that.

“That is the major challenge.”

Among the plans are to set up a coffee shop at the college, which Jon hopes to forge links with local businesses to make happen.