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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

When I write to the noble Viscount setting out the geographical areas that we expect the 150 local partnership teams to cover, I will also set out the arrangements that we expect for bringing those teams into being and how they will operate. We are concerned about the amendment’s detailed specifications of how co-operation between the 150 new LSC local partnership teams should happen, which we believe would be excessively onerous and complex. With the move to regional councils, the requirement for the LSC national council, when preparing guidance for a regional council, to take account of any strategy prepared by any local authority in that regional council area would in London, for example, call for the consideration of more than 30 strategies. We believe that the better way forward is to utilise the LSC’s establishment of its new local partnership teams. These teams will be able to address issues of this kind in a local and flexible manner, working with local authorities individually and in a way that reflects particular local circumstances. Amendment No. 14 is unnecessary, as the LSC and local authorities already work closely together in partnership within the current non-statutory local area agreement arrangements. We want the LSC to have the capacity, structure and flexibility needed to work with partners at local, regional and national levels, and we do not want to impose unnecessary additional bureaucracy and complexity on the LSC to secure something that it is already doing and planning to develop further. On Amendments Nos. 20 and 21, we agree that bodies formulating strategies should have regard to matters raised by bodies and organisations when strategies are being formulated. Again, however, we believe that to specify these matters in the Bill would introduce an unnecessary level of detail. If it were agreed that specific provision should be made in the Bill for any guidance and directions given to strategy bodies to contain provision for such bodies to have regard to local area agreements and local improvement targets, an equally strong argument could be made for the inclusion of several other types of local or national agreement, for instance sector skills councils and sector agreements. It would not improve the Bill to overburden it with such detail, and to specify some matters but not others would be unhelpful, although we intend these matters to be addressed in directions and guidance once the Local Government Bill becomes law. That Bill will cover most of the areas mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp.