§ Mr. BoswellTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will make a statement on redundancies likely to be involved in restructuring of the Learning and Skills Council and its local councils. [129703]
§ Alan JohnsonThe Learning and Skills Council is undertaking a reshaping exercise which is designed to build on its existing strengths, to enhance its capacity to work with partners to develop and to implement the strategies necessary to achieve national targets for skills and learning, while streamlining routine administrative arrangements. At the end of its reshaping the LSC will have significantly fewer staff. The LSC intends to manage these reductions through a process of voluntary severance as far as possible.
John Harwood, the Council's Chief Executive, will write to the hon. Gentleman with more information about the reshaping exercise and place a copy of his reply in the Library.
§ Mr. HancockTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the budget of the Learning and Skills Council was for each of the last three years; and what the predicted budget is in each of the next three years. [129792]
§ Alan JohnsonThe Learning and Skills Council (LSC) assumed many of its responsibilities under the Learning and Skills Act 2000 from 1 April 2001 and for funding of school sixth forms from 1 April 2002. The amounts of its budgets for each financial year from 2001–02, as notified in the relevant Grant Letters to the LSC are as follows:
£ million 2001–02 5,536.000 2002–03 7,310.890 2003–04 8,095.374 2004–05 8,618.254 2005–06 9,200.308 The LSC's budget for 2006–07 is dependent on the outcome of the 2004 Spending Review.