A HOLYROOD committee has called for safeguards to be put in place to protect the financial interests of Scotland's colleges.
A report by the Public Audit Committee called for "clarity" from the Scottish Government on how new arms-length foundations will operate.
Under current plans, colleges are transferring money that was previously held as surpluses into charitable foundations.
The move follows the UK-wide reclassification of further education colleges as public bodies.
Because the new foundations will be independent of colleges, the committee expressed reservations there would no longer be proper scrutiny and accountability over public funds. Hugh Henry, convener of the committee, said: "In Scotland, colleges will be able to create foundations so they can transfer any current accumulated cash reserves and any future annual surpluses... for use in future years.
"These foundations will be required by statute and by the Scottish Charity Regulator to operate in their own best interests, but our committee is concerned that this independence may be to the detriment of individual colleges. The Public Audit Committee is calling on the Scottish Government for clarification on how it will manage the risk that the priorities of foundations could diverge from the priorities of relevant colleges."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article