The Labour Party’s plans for a radical shake-up of government have proposed that control of England’s colleges should be given to local leaders.
Keir Starmer unveiled the party’s report ‘A new Britain: Renewing our democracy and rebuilding our economy’ at Leeds University this morning, which includes bold plans to scrap the House of Lords and form regional clusters of industry.
The report, penned by Labour’s Commission on the UK’s Future and led by former prime minister Gordon Brown, also proposes “new responsibilities for linking local employment needs to local skills training, including the devolution of the job centre network and freeing further education colleges from central control”.
There were 15 other members of the commission; four of whom were local authority leaders. The rest was made up of trade union leaders, former ministers and academics.
The report contains few details on the college proposals aside from further devolution of adult skills funding and local skills improvement plans, but at the launch event this morning Brown said: “To link the jobs people need to the companies who need them, we propose 638 job centres transferred from inflexible central control, down to local control.
