Public Policy
August 01 1999
by Mike TuffreyLet's leave aside the considerable and understandable frustration many in business will feel at the government sweeping aside up to a decade of effort in setting up and then running TECs and Business Links. Instead, let's assess the effects.
On the positive side, the merger with the FE sector will result in more business input into the direction of that huge but poorly performing sector. The new national LSC should also offer more opportunity for input into the national strategy for skills. Increased scope to involve local authorities, trade unions and others at local level is welcome too.
On small businesses, expanding the remit to start-up and micro enterprises is welcome too - but reverses the policy view that growth in 10+ employee companies is where the real gains in competitiveness can be achieved. It's a pity then so many enterprise agencies, set up with big corporate support in the 1980s, have withered away.
More worrying, there is no sign local LSCs will have any more autonomy than TECs, as the CBI has warned, nor that the national SBS will flexibly vary provision to meet local needs. Will local delivery of SME services be customer focused or simply follow national SBS funding. The split of skills (supply) from enterprise (demand) makes sense only if there is a clear coordinated strategy locally. Yet the agencies best placed to offer this, the RDAs, appear to have been sidelined, with neither strategic responsibility nor an obvious role in organisational coordination.
All in all, some good will come of the new arrangements. But it is hard to see that outweighing the costs of upheaval, loss of momentum and a two/three year hiatus until things settle down again. Community affairs managers, charged with finding executive `volunteers' to serve on the new bodies, would be well advised to skip a generation and find directors for whom the prospect of working on government-funded bodies still sounds fun.