ScottishPower and the Royal Bank of Scotland have added access to Wide Learning's courses on the portal service they launched last month for small businesses.

www.work24.co.uk will now include access to internet-based training courses offered by Wide Learning which can fit into a lunch-hour and cost much less than classroom learning. Wide Learning's other customers for CDRom and online products include BP Amoco, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the RAC.

There is a catch though - the service will cost £10 per month after the first 6 months trial period.

Steve Ross, CEO of the joint venture, said: "Training is crucial to the development of any business. Now that Wide Learning's courses are available to Work24 members, it will bring the benefits of online training that are currently enjoyed by large companies to all UK SMEs."

Other services available to small businesses at this one-stop shop include news headlines and articles from Reuters, an online meeting centre enabling companies to save time and money, assistance in setting up an e-commerce store without HTML programming, discounted IT products, stationery and travel, but for some of these you have to pay an additional charge on top of the monthly fee.

Chief executive of Wide Learning, Luke Montagu said: "Work24 will give small businesses in the UK an invaluable set of resources, providing many of the services they need at the click of a mouse. We believe that learning should sit at the heart of the development of all organisations, no matter what size, and we're pleased to be able to provide a service will greatly help entrepreneurs and small business professionals."