It was reported over the weekend that the LSC has been able to support the Skelmersdale College redevelopment. If it works out, then this is quite simply excellent news for Skelmersdale – promising the first set of redevelopment in the town centre since the Asda was built nearly ten years ago.

The LSC had managed to get itself into a terrible mess with the catastrophic mismanagement of it’s own funds. After over-promising funding to 144 Schools and colleges, it was forced to cancel projects leaving some colleges in a real financial mess. Luckily development work hadn’t started when it was announced that the plug was being pulled.

Some are reporting this as a u-turn by the LSC, as if they hadn’t wanted it in the first place. I disagree – if anything the LSC has always supported the redevelopment of the various colleges – they just ran out of cash.

Everyone involved in the negotiations on behalf of the college should be congratulated for getting the plans back on the table. That includes Newcastle College (the ‘owners’ of Skem and Ormskirk College), Steven Broomhead (Chair of the Skelmersdale & Ormskirk College Advisory Committee), the Borough Council and of course Rosie Cooper who was reported as personally intervening throughout the negotiations.

My only reservation is the following section, reported in the Daily Post:

In a statement the Learning and Skills Council said: “LSC will support the development of Skelmersdale and Ormskirk College in Lancashire which will go forward to the approval process.
…
The college’s project will be subject to submitting a business case to show it is value for money.

The extension work is obviously not yet a “done-deal”, and I hope that this announcement isn’t an exercise in over-spinning a bit of genuinely good news.

It is difficult to see who would actually be funding the extension. The implication in all the reports that I’ve seen is that it is the LSC who, having changed its mind, would fund it again. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case. The Daily Post report suggests that there will be a new approval process in which the LSC’s role is not actually to fund the extension but instead support the College’s bid. That’s a very different role for the LSC and also means that the scheme is subject to the yet another funding body taking a decision.

There are clearly unanswered questions over who will be taking the final decision, when it will be made and when the work on the college can begin.

Putting that to one side and taking the news at face-value, this announcement still represents a bit of good news for the wider Skelmersdale town centre redevelopment. The college work has always been independent of the St Modwens / West Lancs BC town centre renewal, but has been a key part of the town centre redevelopment as a whole. Any investment in the college could act as a catalyst for the rest of the town centre which has been looking precarious since the Knowsley Everton/Tesco development plans emerged.

Update: Since writing this I notice that Rosie Cooper is reported as saying that the LSC itself has committed the funding for the college:

West Lancashire MP, Rosie Cooper, is delighted with the announcement that funding has been committed by the Learning and Skills Council that will allow Skelmersdale College to go-ahead after it was earlier signalled that the college could not be funded for 2010.

This month, West Lancs Conservatives proudly boast that they are putting the “heart back into Tanhouse” with the rather nasty inference that it wasn’t there before and that it can only be returned with charity and a donation from the Conservative Association (read: a very small slice of Lord Ashcroft’s millions).

Tanhouse, it seems, can be fixed by the Conservative Parliamentary candidate waltzing in with a paint roller and single handedly whitewashing the community centre – as seen in their promo picture.

Their condescending, head-patting, “aren’t we being nice to you poor Scousers” tone is exactly the kind of patronising crap that many of their councillors come out with and which Paul Cotterill has pointed out on numerous occasions over at the Bickerstaffe Record.

They say that the donation from the Conservatives helped renovate “an area of open space to provide a nicer environment for the people of Tanhouse” (my emphasis).

Oh yes, and after you’ve finished painting this wall, you can get back to making Jam and singing Jerusalem in the knowledge that Tanhouse is fixed and you can get on with more important things.

No. The problems across Tanhouse and more widely Skelmersdale, will not be fixed by the occasional community get-together painting walls. It might help a little bit, but the problems run much deeper than a couple of walls with grafitti.

The Tories have been in control of West Lancashire (and therefore Skem) for most of the past quarter century since West Lancs Council was formed. Great strides were made in the late nineties when Labour ran the council and started to address the problems, but these have been undone by the Tories. Reduction of cleaning services and grounds maintenance leaving many communal areas overgrown and shoddy. The closure of cash offices for rent payment, denial of free swimming for under 18s, the lack of public transport and the blinkered focus on commerce instead of community to regenerate the town.

Perhaps, if the Tory controlled Council did their job and cleaned up in the first place, there would be a better civic pride in the area; and perhaps, if the Tory controlled Council cleaned up grafitti then this kind of stunt wouldn’t be necessary.

Obviously, this stunt is about votes. Local Tories know that they can mobilise their support across the constituency – but a big Labour turnout in Skelmersdale will make it difficult for them to win.

If they treated the people of Skelmersdale with some respect, at the very least granting them the same level of services as enjoyed in other parts of the Borough, then that respect would be reciprocated one way or another in the ballot box. Instead they treat the townsfolk as second-class citizens, not deserving of good Council services but instead reliant upon charitable handouts – from the Tories, no less.