Catalogue description Employment Department Group: Skills Training Agency: Registered Files

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Date range

Details of EDG 4
Reference: EDG 4
Title: Employment Department Group: Skills Training Agency: Registered Files
Description:

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

Date: 1983-1995
Arrangement:

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

See also ET 21
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Department for Education and Employment, 1995-2001

Employment Department, The Training Agency, 1988-1991
Physical description: 58 file(s)
Access conditions: Open unless otherwise stated
Immediate source of acquisition:

from 2017 Department for Work and Pensions
Custodial history: Employment Department Group 1988–1996; Department for Education 1996–2001; Department for Work and Pensions 2001-2017.
Accumulation dates: 1988 to 1990
Selection and destruction information: 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).
Accruals: Series is accruing.
Administrative / biographical background:

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.

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