Doubts over future of education agency's Portsmouth HQ because of Brexit and coronavirus

Training Vision, based in Somers Road North, Landport, has benefited from a share of at least £35.7m of EU cash since 2014.

But operations director Domenico Bochicchio said ‘question marks’ now loom over its city HQ because of a drastic reduction in funding.

The firm lost up to 35 per cent of its EU contributions between 2018 and 2019 and stands to lose the same this year, Mr Bochicchio said.

It had been spent on paving the way for educational training opportunities for Asian, European and American students coming to the UK.

‘This has led to a 35 per cent reduction in students coming over,' said Mr Bochicchio.

‘Most of them now can not afford to pay for a visa or a passport.

‘There’s a question mark over the future of our office because we do not know what will happen next year.’

Uncertainty over Brexit, which began on January 31, already forced the company to close its Bournemouth office last May.

Now business is taking a hit because of concerns over coronavirus, which originated in China – the home nation of most of the firm’s students.

Mr Bochicchio said: ‘We don't know when the virus will be sorted and we can try to reach projects from the Chinese market.’

The firm is now trying to offset Brexit losses by working with its Portsmouth-based sister company, ETN Experience, in the private sector.

Its work includes professional visits to huge brands like Chanel and Maserati and football camps with Manchester City and Real Madrid.

Data released today by My EU shows Portsmouth-area organisations have benefited from shares of at least £486m in EU funding since 1999.

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The University of Portsmouth received a chunk of £78.5m in that time, which was partially for cosmological and maritime research.

Other big beneficiaries include National Air Traffic Services near Swanwick, which got a portion of £85.7m of EU funding, Portsmouth education consultancy IBD Partnership, which shared £18.6m and Seagate Systems, which used to be based in Havant, and got £6m.

Southsea bakery Bread Addiction also received £47,000 for work-based learning projects.

A University of Portsmouth spokesman said: ‘EU funding has provided significant impact to the University of Portsmouth, our city and our region.

‘Until trade negotiations are completed between the UK and the EU we will not know what access UK universities will have to future funding streams.

‘The University will continue to be an international institution and will build its global reach and reputation by cultivating international partnerships, based on shared aspirations and strengths, to enhance education, research and innovation.’

Hope Thomas and John Lees-Miller from MyEU added: ‘When we built myeu.uk we found that EU had dozens of programmes that funded job creation, rural development, research, the arts and opportunities for young people in the UK.

‘We, and a lot of people spoke to, didn't know about all this local money being invested by the EU.

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‘Now that we have left, the UK government will have to step up to create new programmes to replace this funding, and they don't have much time.’

Recent figures indicate the UK paid far more into the EU in 2018 than it got back, receiving £4bn of funding from £13bn of contributions.