AN ATTACK on Burnley Council's "disastrous'' excursions into the field of training has been blasted independent councillor Harry Brooks.

The council had not learnt the lesson that training programmes should have been left to the professionals years ago, he said.

The comments came as a full council meeting decided not to renew the contract with ELTEC for youth courses at the ITeC Centre.

Coun Brooks said: "Now we have to leave it to the professionals because we are running out of cash. It has cost the council over £600,000 over six years making big inroads into the reserves. "We have just stumbled from loss to loss. It is time we stopped this long running nonsense.''

Finance chairman Coun Peter Kenyon said the council had been successful in providing training and jobs for people including the long term unemployed.

"Is he saying we should never have been involved in helping the unemployed back to work through training?'' he asked.

Coun Marion Smith said people had made successes of their lives because Burnley Council gave them the opportunity through ITeC.

Coun Tony Harrison said ITeC was not closing down, only the part involving training for the 16-18 year olds.

Over the years the council had benefited from training in new technology which was part of the £600,000.

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