..this has happened today for a health and safety course we have paid a lot of money for.

Fuming

You had me sweating then........until I remembered I gave each delegate course details by hand!

LEV may be needed quite soon!

Recently I had a room filled with assorted managers directors and stuff and the trainer did not turn up! What had happened was that rather than going through his secretary (who was on leave) I contacted the trainer directly. So he pencilled in the date and then double booked. Not a good place to be.

Zoltangera I empathise... I regularly used to suffer with this as shift patterns seemed to mean that training got in the way of peoples lives!!
Training was always advised to managers well in advance (3 months in most cases) so that arrangements for shift changes etc could be agreed and then reminders given and yet attendance was still poor. When career objectives and performance standards required attendance at training courses, then things started to change!
Attendance was very rarely an issue with the operatives as generally they were glad of an opportunity for improvement.
I suppose it often depends on the approach of the company and how much emphasis is put on the importance of training whether it is H&S or some other field.

I make sure that memo's etc have been sent out in plenty of time, and then as we cross charge training back to relevant departments; I make the dept heads aware that they will be 'paying' for the training regardless and if they fail to send a delegate or the delegate fails to turn they will be invited to the next course - costing their department twice for the training - attendance has improved somewhat since I started doing this! I do make allowances if there is time to find a replacement for someone that is genuinely unable to attend.
Saying that I did have one departmental manager not attend because I did not send him a reminder - he had the date in his diary etc but because there was no reminder he did not attend - I got a bit hot under the collar that morning! 'savage' was the term I think I used.

I did that once.
Well, I attended the manual handling training but refused the "test" lifts.
The management were not pleased, the trainer was not pleased.
The test lift was a 25 litre paint drum with a dozen very large bolts in it...about 25kg.
Another looked at it, then went and got a lift truck to lift it onto the bench !
Management issued a verbal warning; I complained to HSE.
The trainer/s were instructed to alter the course.
Who won ?
Nobody.
Bad course, with the potential (very real) to actually injure people.

Morning,

What you can do really depends on the backing you get from your executive/senior managers.
In the past I have been able to affect bonus and advancement of key employees through a requirement for an individual safety assessment.
It worked with the Engineering Manager when it was pointed out to him that he would lose a large % of his bonus if he did not start attending Safety Committee meetings.

I would also note that getting people to attend may be one problem but getting positive participation can be a bigger one. That really depends on the quality of the course and its presenter.
Horses and water come to mind

Take Care

As a trainer myself i work for some organisations who have repeat offenders in the missing training department, so as a detterrant they decided to take the cost of the course and divide it either by the maximum number of delegates or the number of delegates invited and charge them accordingly if they did not turn up, this seemed to work quite well.

Which will just go onto the [long] list of laws that many employers disregard in normal everyday work.