Catalogue description Records of Agricultural Training Boards

In August 1966 the Minister of Labour, using powers established by the Industrial Training Act 1964, set up the Agricultural, Horticultural and Forestry Industry Training Board. This body, like the other industrial training boards, was designed to provide appropriate training facilities for the industry, to be financed by a levy on the employers determined by the size of their business. Farmers, growers and foresters could appeal against the levies to the Central Office of the Industrial Tribunals. A headquarters board would formulate and co-ordinate national policy, while regional training boards oversaw the actual provision of training. Unlike the other training boards, however, it proved impossible to collect such a levy from farmers, partly due to the nature of their businesses, and partly due to resistance from farmers' and growers' organisations. The board continued to be administered and financed by the Ministry of Labour and its successors until the Employment and Training Act 1973 enabled the Agriculture Ministers to assume responsibility for the board. The formal transition was completed in 1975, from which time the chairman and members of the board were appointed by the agriculture ministers.

In 1974, a separate Forestry Training Board was established and the Board was renamed the Agricultural Training Board. An Agricultural Training Board Act 1982 rationalised the legislative framework for the board's activities, and an amendment in 1985 allowed the board to provide training services to overseas customers on a cost recovery basis. A private member's bill was enacted in 1987 to enable the board to provide training in the United Kingdom on a cost recovery basis in conservation, environment improvement and other aspects of rural life, as well as basic agricultural skills. As a result of these activities, it was possible for the grant-in-aid support to be reduced from October 1990. In September 1994 the board was wound up as a statutory body, its assets having been transferred to a successor body, ATB-Landbase Limited, by a statutory instrument (number 555 of 1994). The privatised ATB-Landbase continues to supply training on a contract basis to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.