A Custom React LMS and Public Course Platform Built for a Grant-Funded Training CIC

South Cumbria Skills Exchange is a Community Interest Company (CIC) operating as Whamos Training and Development CIC — a grant-funded adult learning organisation based in Millom, South Cumbria. They deliver 27 courses across a wide range of subjects, funded through National Lottery, Cumbria Community Foundation, UK Prosperity Fund, and other grant streams. Their learners are adults in South Cumbria accessing free or subsidised learning opportunities.

The brief was significant in scope. The organisation needed a public-facing website where potential learners could discover courses, read about the organisation, and submit an application — and a private back-end system where staff could manage every aspect of the learner journey from application through enrolment, course completion, and grant reporting. The private system needed to handle multiple tutors, multiple learners per tutor, grant eligibility tracking, session scheduling, assignment management, document signing, and GDPR compliance.

No off-the-shelf LMS product could meet the grant reporting and eligibility requirements of a funded CIC operating under multiple grant funding streams simultaneously. The system had to be built from scratch.

The Learner Management System is a custom React web application developed by Technophobia Ltd — not a WordPress plugin, not a themed off-the-shelf product, but a bespoke full-stack application with its own REST API, its own database structure, and its own role-based access system serving four distinct user types: admin, tutor, learner, and guardian.

The admin dashboard gives the organisation a complete operational view — total learners, active courses, active grants, upcoming sessions, pending submissions, tutor workload by course and learner count, and GDPR request management. Quick actions allow staff to add learners, create sessions, create assignments, and view reports without navigating complex menus. The legacy data entry module handles migration of historical learner records from previous paper-based or spreadsheet systems.

Tutors have their own dashboard showing their assigned learners and courses, their session schedule, and any assignments requiring marking. The system tracks hours and workload per tutor — critical for grant reporting requirements that mandate specific contact hour evidence. Learners access their own view showing enrolled courses, upcoming sessions, assignments, and progress. Guardians have a monitored access view with appropriate visibility of their learner's progress without full system access.

Operating under multiple simultaneous grant funding streams is one of the most administratively complex challenges a small CIC faces. Each funder has its own learner eligibility criteria, its own evidence requirements, its own contact hour standards, and its own reporting timetable. Managing this across paper records or spreadsheets creates significant compliance risk and administrative overhead that diverts staff time from actual learner support.

The South Cumbria Skills Exchange LMS handles grant management as a first-class feature of the system. Active grants are tracked against enrolled learners, with eligibility status visible per learner per grant. Hours are logged per session, per tutor, per learner, generating the evidence trail that funders require at reporting time. The system knows which learners are funded under which grant stream and surfaces compliance alerts when learners are at risk of falling outside grant criteria.

The legacy data entry module allowed the organisation to migrate historical learner records from previous systems — ensuring that historical grant evidence was preserved in the new system rather than remaining in disconnected spreadsheets. For a CIC facing audit from multiple funders, that continuity of record is a compliance necessity.

South Cumbria Skills Exchange operates with 18 learners enrolled across 27 active courses, managed by two tutors, under four simultaneous grant funding streams — all tracked, reported, and evidenced through the LMS. The public site at whamostraining.co.uk is the learner-facing front door — course discovery, funding information, and the Learner Application form that feeds directly into the LMS onboarding workflow.

The LMS was built from scratch by Technophobia Ltd as a custom React application because no off-the-shelf product could meet the specific requirements of a grant-funded CIC operating under multiple funding streams with different eligibility criteria, evidence standards, and reporting timetables. Every feature was built to serve a real operational need.

If your organisation runs funded learning programmes and needs a system that can handle the grant compliance, multi-funder reporting, and learner management requirements that off-the-shelf products cannot, we have built exactly this — live, working, and proving itself in South Cumbria every day.