AN East Lancashire MP is to meet the area's training boss amid fears the area might lose its voice in a new county-wide body.

The government is to replace the existing Training and Enterprise Council system with a new group of Learning and Skills Councils.

There is a growing fear that Lancashire's two 'tecs' - the East Lancashire Training and Enterprise Council and its western neighbour LAWTEC - might be swallowed up into a single body.

Recent comments by Lancashire County Council deputy leader Frank McKenna and education chairman Hazel Harding have increased concern that there will be a single LSE based in Preston.

Many involved in the training field fear that East Lancashire's individual needs would lose out in such a shake-up.

Now Pendle MP Mr Prentice is to meet ELTEC chief executive Mark Price on Wednesday to discuss the far-reaching changes to skills and training provision published last week. Mr Prentice said: "ELTEC is concerned - as we all are - by the state of manufacturing in East Lancashire and while we have gone through a difficult patch, I believe we have turned the corner.

"But for businesses to succeed they need well trained and highly motivated people and this is where the training providers come in.

"The present set-up is overly complicated. I sometimes wonder how people find their way through it all."

From April 2001 a new Learning and Skills Council for England will co-ordinate the activities of all further education and training with 'tecs' replaced by 40-50 local LSCs based on population areas of no less than 500,000 and probably geographically on counties.

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