raining slashed as ovt cash cuts bite
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SOME training grants from the Road Transport Industry T ng Board are to be cut, following a E2m reduction in the income of the Board.
eas of training most likely to b affected are skill t—fing, acc lerated training, and app entice recruitment. The red ction affects grants descried in part IV, E, F, H, of the Employers' Guide for 197 /80 which has been rece tly issued.
T e RTITB says that £2m mus be withdrawn from an earli r provisional promise of £2.7 m for training for the current financial year. It Cannot make good the deficit caused by a reduction in the Manpower Services Commission's grant by injecting money from its own funds.
But the Board's chairman, Fred Lloyd re-iterated the point made in letters to employers that grants described as payable from the Board's own funds would be honoured.
A month ago, along with the other industrial training boards, the RTITB had its direct grant from the Manpower Services Commission cut, in this case by £41,000.
But at the same time the MSC warned the RTITB that if its income from levies was greater than estimated the grant would be further reduced.
It is thought that this accounts for the £2m reduction in its income.
The areas of the Board's training activities which would most suffer were decided at a meeting earlier this week. At this meeting it was also decided to appeal to the Manpower Services Commission in a hope that some of the cash might be restored.
RTITB chairman Fred Lloyd, along with several other genior Board members are to meet the chairman of the MSC, Richard O'Brien with this object in mind.
In the meantime it warns employers possibly expecting grants that "certain MSC grants made on a provisional basis will have to be cancelled." The cuts have to be made immediately since the MSC grant reduction applies to the current financial year, nearly half of which has already gone. An RTITB spokesman has commented that the cuts are that much worse because the training expenditure budget has already been decided and started. Nearly all the grants from the MSC were reduced as part of the Government's spending cuts.