THERE is no dispute that, in line with its frequently-stressed commitment to education, the government's revamp of post-16 learning and training, announced yesterday, looks to create a highly-skilled workforce for the next century that will boost the prosperity and opportunity of Britain and its people.

But one wonders if it is taking the right approach when the shake-up threatens to junk local expertise in shaping training and education for the new generation of school-leavers.

Education supremo David Blunkett claims that the present system, based on 172 training and enterprise councils across the country and with higher and further education operating in a virtually separate sphere, will be improved by bringing skills training and post-16 education together under the control of some 50 new Learning and Skills Councils. Yet while this might lead to some benefits in reducing the duplication and overlap in the existing TEC network, the shift to fewer, but bigger, bodies in charge of training and college learning will inevitably mean the loss of localised focus and input of the kind we have now with ELTEC in East Lancashire and from its county neighbour, LAWTEC.

These are bodies that draw on the expertise, experience and requirements of key components in our economy - principally business and industry, workers and local government - and our fear is that their crucial input into the shaping of training and education could be diluted if responsibility is removed from them in the setting up of these new, more remote skills councils, of which there would probably be just one for the whole of Lancashire.

ELTEC, one of the top five per cent of training and enterprise councils in England when measured by results, is today concerned that all its good work and employer involvement could be depleted as a result.

We share that fear - and ask Mr Blunkett to examine whether, in this instance, bigger will be better and whether the removal of local input in this crucial function squares at all with the government's supposed commitment to the decentralisation of decision-making.

Just when East Lancashire was beginning to get its act together to market itself as an economic entity the government comes along and saws away one of its major planks.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.