Motec the final verdict due now
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THE FUTURE of the Road Transport Industry Training Board's Motec training centres is in the balance again. A meeting this week was expected to settle their fate once and for all, reports ALAN MILLAR.
RTITB chairman John Armstrong revealed that the entire future of the Multi-Occupational Training and Education Centres at High Ercall in Shropshire and at Livingston, West Lothian was under review, and that closure of one or both was still possible.
This is despite growing business for Youth Training Scheme students at Livingston and a substantial reduction in the costs attributed to High Email, Last year, High Ercall looked especially vulnerable, but a management survival plan more than met the target set by the Board and its future looked assured. This week's meeting was more likely to endorse that, but there still is support for closure.
Clearly, Mr Armstrong wants the Motecs to survive, and points out that they are so far apart as to make it very difficult to combine them into one centre for the industry. In addition, he told CM, they provide research and development services for transport industry training that would otherwise need to be bought in from outside businesses.
Transport and General Workers Union deputy general secretary Alex Kitson, an RTITB board member, said last week that he was confident that Livingston Motec would remain open. He said he was hopeful that the RTITB would accept a rescue plan put forward by Motec's board of governors.
The plan would expand the number of Youth Training Scheme places, while retaining the provision for the motor industry's apprentices. It would also involve cutting jobs, something Motec governors would reluctantly accept if it meant the centre could be saved.
Mr Kitson, who is representative on the board for the TGWU said: "Our first priority is to keep Motec open.
"In recent months we have been meeting all sorts of people, from educationalists to industrialists, and we now have great hope that Motec will be retained."
Trade unionists, the Scottish Motor Trade Association, and local MPs Tam Dalyell and Robin Cook have united to stave off the closure threat.
Mr Cook, who is a governor at Motec, said: "It is vitally important that the RTITB accepts our rescue plan when it meets. If it doesn't I have every intention to take the matter up in Parliament."
Livingston Motec has just over 120 YTS trainees at the centre and 90 apprentices who are looked after by a staff of 82. Around 16 of the staff would be made redundant under the rescue plan.