Councils called for an end to the centralised approach to training as a report found the Government's £4bn annual skills spend was ‘failing to deliver'.

The number of adults participating in Government-funded further education and skills training has halved - from 3.2 million in 2010-11 to 1.6 million in 2020-21 – with the decrease particularly marked among older workers and in poorer areas.

Meg Hillier, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which published the report, said: ‘Despite £4bn a year of taxpayers' money spent on skills programmes, participation has fallen off a cliff.

'The Government is not going to make inroads on levelling up if it does not get ahead of this.'

Chairman of the Local Government Association's people and places board, Kevin Bentley, said: ‘We need to move away from a top-down, centralised approach to skills, with employment support devolved to local leaders to get the best value for money from the billions currently spent by Government on various disjointed national schemes.'