Employment Department Group: Skills Training Agency: Registered Files

EDG 4

1983-1995

The files in this series reflect the process of the transfer of the Skills Training Agency into the private sector.

The series is arranged in file reference order within each transfer.

See also ET 21

Public Record(s)

English

• Department for Education and Employment, 1995-2001
• Employment Department, The Training Agency, 1988-1991

58 file(s)

Open unless otherwise stated

from 2017 Department for Work and Pensions

Topics

Labour

Employment Department Group 1988–1996; Department for Education 1996–2001; Department for Work and Pensions 2001-2017.

1988 to 1990

Series is accruing.

Mixed series review, initial sift followed by file by file review. Selection and destruction as per OSP31 4.2.2.3 (social and industrial history for records relating to vocational training, particularly those closely related to the activities of the Department of Employment), and OSP31 5.1.27 (initiatives aimed at improving vocational training as part of the fight against increasing unemployment).

An interim title of Training Agency was given to the organisation formerly known as the Training Commission, which was part of the Manpower Services Commission. It was disbanded in September 1988, when the Agency and its functions became directly responsible to the Secretary of State for Employment.

The White Paper 'Employment for the 1990s' in 1988 stated that the Skills Training Agency should move into the private sector. Skill centres nationwide were then established and sold as individual businesses.

There were 60 skill centres nationwide, providing training in crafts, technical and supervisory skills for private firms with government training schemes. They primarily offered training courses in Automotive, Computer and Office Technology, Construction, Customer Care and Quality Assurance, Electrical and Electronic, Fabrication and Welding, Health, Safety and Regulatory, Materials Handling, Mechanical Engineering, Pneumatics, Hydraulics and Robotics, Supervisory industries. The facilities varied from centre to centre, and included some mobile training. The Agency was not sold as a whole, but as individual businesses. The sale included property and the land.