FUNDING chiefs have called for an independent review of the powerful board that controls Glasgow's three colleges.

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC), which distributes millions of pounds of public money to the sector, acted after concerns the Glasgow Colleges' Regional Board was "far from ready".

The board should have been in a position to take over the administration of the £80 million total funding for Glasgow's three colleges in April, but the date has now been moved back to August.

The SFC do not believe the board, under the control of chairman Henry McLeish, the former First Minister, has made sufficient progress and has already

suggested parachuting its own official into the organisation.

An SFC spokesman said: "Our view is that the regional board has made insufficient progress towards discharging its role of funding Glasgow's colleges. This includes its failure to appoint a chief officer to the board.

"The board is far from ready to be in a position to fund the city's colleges, one of its core functions, and SFC naturally needs assurance on certain key governance criteria for this to happen.

"As a result, the SFC has proposed a review of progress in addition to the secondment of a senior director."

The funding body is currently considering the best candidate to conduct the review, who may be chosen from outside the board.

A spokesman for the Glasgow Colleges Regional Board said: "As part of the ongoing discussions with the SFC we are looking at what further steps are required to progress the board toward fundable body status and we are looking at that progress.

"SFC made a number of suggestions that we are considering, but we see no need for an independent review. Substantial progress has been made and we now need to move forward to deal with the outstanding issues."

Meanwhile, documents seen by The Herald highlight the concern SFC officials had over the actions of the board of the Glasgow Clyde College in suspending its principal Susan Walsh in February.

Mrs Walsh was suspended on full pay by the college board pending a review, but the SFC wrote to board chairman George Chalmers in March raising concerns over the "discharge of his responsibilities" and responses he made to the organisation over his actions.

The letter from Laurence Howells, chief executive of the SFC, dated March 6th, states: "I remain dissatisfied with particular aspects of those responses which further augment concern regarding the governance and management of the college and specifically the discharge of your responsibilities as chair."

In a series of bullet points, Mr Howells goes on to outline concerns over the "failure to properly advise me in the last month of your serious concerns regarding the performance of the principal as required under the financial memorandum".

Additional concerns are the failure to provide sufficient information to the board as to the reasons for the suspension of the principal and the subsequent investigation and whether the board sought appropriate information to justify the suspension.

A spokesman for the board of Clyde College said: "We are very concerned that this letter to the chair of the board has been selectively and deliberately leaked. Mr Howells letter of 6th March is only one part of a series of correspondence between the chair and the chief executive of the SFC where we have questioned the nature of the Funding Council's proposed review and their intervention on an ongoing employment matter."