THE HEART of England Training and Enterprise Council is to be closed down.

Secretary of State for Education and the Employment David Blunkett has announced that all TECs are to be replaced with new Learning and Skills Councils (LSC).

The announcement means that Oxfordshire will lose its Abingdon-based TEC - opened with much fanfare under the last Conservative Government - to become part of an LSC area covering Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes. Business representatives will form 40 per cent of the new LSC's board.

Chairman of the Heart of England TEC Richard Flint said: "I welcome the fact that 40 per cent of the members of the local skills council will be people with substantial recent business or commercial experience.

"This will ensure that the council will be sensitive to local demand and will deliver the high quality training that firms need.

"Oxfordshire has the highest trained workforce in the South East."

He added: "Oxfordshire's outstanding business acumen and high standards in training will be vital to the new area for the local Learning and Skills Council and Small Business Service."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Employment and Education said that the TECs would cease to exist in 2001 but it was too early to say where the headquarters of the region's local LSC would be based.

She said that the idea behind the rationalisation was to bring all the diverse training organisations under one efficient umbrella.

The headquarters of the LSC , which also replaces the Further Education Funding Council, will be in Coventry.

The organisation will have 47 local arms and an annual budget of £5bn.

The TEC's role as an enterprise advice centre, running for example Business Link Heart of England, is to be replaced by the Department of Trade and Industry's Small Business Service, which will have 45 local franchises.

Mr Blunkett said; "I believe that the business-led Local Learning and Skills Councils in the South East will be sensitive to local demands and will deliver high quality skills and training."

Story date: Monday 01 November

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