Catalogue description General Nursing Council for England and Wales: Registrar: Correspondence and Papers, Area Nurse Training Committees

Fourteen Area Nurse Training Committees (ANTCs) were established under the Nurses Act 1949, a fifteenth (Wessex), was established in 1959.

The functions of the ANTCs were:

• to oversee the manner in which nurses were trained in each area
• to promote improvements in nurse training and to research into the improvement of nurse training
• to report to the council on the above functions
• to advise and assist hospital management committees and boards of governors of teaching hospitals
• to assist the council in the approval of training hospitals

From 1952 to 1957 there is a division between hospitals' and general correspondence. Hospitals' correspondence was confined mainly to communications with management committees, boards of governors and the ANTC. General correspondence was largely composed of General Nursing Council circulars to ANTCs.

Conferences were held periodically to discuss various aspects of nurse training. The 1952 Conference discussed the functions and financial procedure of the ANTCs under s.2 and s.6 of the Nurses Act 1949. These issues were never satisfactorily resolved and continued to be discussed at subsequent conferences up to 1970. Finances were a particular problem as the committees were prone to overspend.

Under the terms of the Nurses (Regional Nurse-Training Committees) Order SI 1974/235, the ANTCs became the Regional Nurse-Training Committees (RNTCs). The functions of the RNTCs were fundamentally the same as those of the ANTCs.