Written evidence to be reported to the House

Part of Education and Skills Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 22 January 2008.

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Les Lawrence: I think it would not be inappropriate to say that the provision of Connexions services was variable in the extreme across the country—from very poor service provision to exemplary provision. What tends to happen within local authorities at the moment depends on what service had been provided prior to the decision to take it into the local authorities’ jurisdiction. I think that inevitably, because you are seeking to devolve the responsibility to local authorities, it will bring about a variance in the nature and type of provision, simply because local authorities will gear the new arrangements to the needs and requirements of their localities. That means that they may well continue—Warwickshire is a good example—to use the Connexions service that was there before. They have been commissioned. Equally, some local authorities, like my own, because it was provided across Birmingham and Solihull, disaggregated the original service and were providing it in a much more localised way throughout the city, whereas in Solihull they have literally taken it in to their new trust arrangements.

I am confident that local authorities will look at the new service in the context of their needs and requirements, and actually make it a more localised provision, depending upon the nature of the localities and neighbourhoods that they serve. So what we will see happen somewhere like Northumberland will be of a very different nature, much more localised, than what you see in a city like Birmingham, which will be more area-based.