The Learning and Skills Councils' planning and funding systems should prioritise adults from socially disadvantaged areas and a strategic approach must be taken to ' designing in' greater responsiveness and providing accessible, informal, community-based learning. Decisions about provision at local level should be sensitive to any new mechanisms for neighbourhood influence over the ways in which public services are delivered in the more 'joined-up' strategy for neighbourhood renewal. The size of the challenge calls for a major injection of in-service training and staff development since this aspect of provision has largely been neglected over the last 20 years and the skills have been lost. A national programme to train, deploy and support outreach workers is required to help build the infrastructure and recruit learners at local level. There is likely to be a limited supply of such people and it will be necessary to provide them with networks of support.
Careful thought needs to be given to the planning and delivery of such provision.
We know from projects supported by the Adult and Community Learning Fund that local communities are finding ways of building their capacity. Lessons learned from these projects must be distilled and disseminated. It will be important for the voice of learners from disadvantaged communities to be heard in the Learning and Skills Councils. Reasons for weakness Remedies High concentrations of people with limited skills, motivation and experience of regular work mean that there is a shortage of people willing and able to manage and support local organisations. Funding and regulatory regimes are not flexible enough to support voluntary and community structures which make it hard for them to cross the threshold and become themselves providers of learning.