Draft Cornwall Council (Adult Education Functions) Regulations 2025 Draft East Midlands Combined County Authority (Adult Education Functions) Regulations 2025 Draft York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2025

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 General Committees

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I welcome the devolution of this money to Cornwall, and I am pleased that the Launceston adult education centre will remain open as a direct result of local people there standing up and making their voices heard. Unfortunately, the adult education centre in Camelford is still set to close. That is baffling decision. This is an area with limited public transport, high levels of deprivation and real need for accessible education and support. Removing this service risks cutting people off from opportunity entirely. Simply telling them to go elsewhere is not an option.

These centres provide far more than learning. They are safe, welcoming spaces where people build confidence, access support services and begin to move forward in their lives step by step—all things that cannot just be replaced by an online equivalent. I recently met a constituent who is a single mum living in Bude in the north-east corner of my constituency, who travels every week to Newquay for her adult education course on counselling—a journey that takes one hour and 20 minutes on two buses. Now that Cornwall has secured more than £10 million in devolved funding for adult skills, we should be expanding the provision, not winding it down. I hope that that happens following this announcement. We must use this funding to create a service that is better promoted, more responsive and rooted in communities such as Camelford, which desperately need them. We must ensure that no one is left behind, and that every adult in Cornwall has the opportunity to learn, grow and contribute.