After some weeks of confusion about the future of adult education in our area, it is now clear that the Somerset Skills and Learning (SS&L) centre in Minehead is going to close.

SS&L has said it plans to close six centres across Somerset and to make more than 50 staff redundant.

Details have not been announced, but SS&L has told me: “We will . . . .deliver into Minehead and other areas via other venues.”

So some sort of adult education will continue. But it will be more difficult to access and what is on offer will be narrower in scope.

The chief executive of SS&L has said: “We need to drastically reduce our delivery of community learning courses, a terrible blow for Somerset.”

But it is a blow that need not have fallen. This has happened because a funding agency gave SS&L less money than it needs.

SS&L was at the mercy of a funding agency only because the Conservative leadership of Somerset County Council abandoned its responsibility for adult education and floated it off as an independent company.

There is no exact timetable for the cuts yet. But SS&L has said that centres will close in the coming months and staff are expected to lose their jobs before Christmas.

Those staff will lose their livelihoods. Many other people will lose the chance of education and personal development.

And all in the name of privatisation and penny-pinching.

Andy Lewis, Elm Grove, Minehead.