He also claims co-financing has made it easier to access European Social Fund money.Sir George is irritated that principals fail to see things are improving – even though his own task force acknowledged that improvements take time “Trust is a two-way business,” he says. It is re-interviewing college principals, employers and other stakeholders to see if things have improved.Carshalton College in Surrey is one of 117 colleges that is now eligible for a “light touch” audit. Colleges were selected because they have a good record of providing management information and claiming funds. David Watkins, the principal, is still unsure exactly what it will mean but is optimistic of reduced paperwork. In addition to the bureaucracy task force, which is now focusing on private trainers and employers, the LSC has set up a bureaucracy review group, which will try to prevent red tape creeping back into colleges.The Prime Minister’s better regulation task force has also cast its eye over post-16 learning and published a highly critical report in 2002. “We’ve had a positive response from the local and national LSC,” he says.There is certainly no lack of interest in reducing red tape. The LSC allows him some leeway in how he counts learners at the college with the result that funding has increased.

“He is making all the right noises,” says Pendle.Bill Grady, the principal of Isle of Wight College, is full of praise for the way that his local LSC allowed the college to “re-interpret” how it counts learners so that it can claim money more easily. When Grady took over two years ago, the Isle of Wight college had debts of £1.8m and was reeling from a poor inspection.With just 130,000 people on the island, the college has a greater struggle to attract students than mainland colleges. Peter Pendle, the chief executive of the Association for College Management, says that it has made important strides to reduce bureaucracy but it will take time before colleges notice all the effects The key thing, he says, is to simplify funding. Consultations are taking place over a new system, based on three-year development plans, to come into force next summer.Most principals are pinning their hopes on Mark Haysom, the LSC’s new chief executive, whose private sector background may give him more chance of reducing government red tape. “A lot of students don’t want to say that they have a disability or describe their ethnic origin.”Condemnation of the LSC is by no means universal.

That has now doubled to half an hour for each student, he says.At Stourbridge College, the principal, Sadie Walton, is equally frustrated. In particular, she blames poor communication in her local LSC that means her college is frequently asked for the same information more than once Excessive target-setting adds to the problem. Meanwhile, the college struggles to claim money for widening participation because it cannot gain all the information required.”We can spend days filling in information,” says Walton. But the AoC is unimpressed by the task force’s claims that the new system of gaining European Social Fund money – known as “co-financing” – is an improvement. John Brennan, the AoC’s chief executive, says Wiltshire College is not alone in deciding that the hassle of making applications through a local LSC means the exercise is not worthwhile. “It does not seem to be in the least bit simpler,” he says.According to George Bright, his college used to spend an average of 15 minutes collecting data on each student to satisfy LSC rules. The new council promised there would be less red tape than under its predecessor, the Further Education Funding Council, but initially things got worse rather than better.Last month, at the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) annual conference, the LSC’s bureaucracy task force declared that the mountain of paperwork was finally on the move – partly due to “light touch” audits introduced by the LSC for about one in four colleges.

But to gain the money, the college had to provide its LSC with information about 2,000 learners – only 10 per cent of whom were directly affected by the project.According to the college principal, George Bright, the time spent on data collection scarcely made it worth making the bid “We won’t get involved in another,” he says. “It’s not worth the income you obtain.”Colleges have been involved in a running argument with the Learning and Skills Council over bureaucracy ever since the LSC was set up in April 2001. Earlier this year, Wiltshire College received £200,000 from the European Social Fund to lay on more opportunities for learning in rural areas. If that comes off, one thing’s for sure: Ms Robinson won’t have a problem tracking down copious examples of bureaucratic, departmental documentation to poke fun at.For more information, phone 01752 862350; or e-mail karen.griffiths lsc.gov.uk. “We then wanted to extend the play’s very personal message into the public arena, and that’s how No Problem? was born,” explained Ms Moncrieff.Another frequent venue for No Problem? are union regional conferences. Since achieving new-found status commensurate with union negotiators in April this year, union learning representatives are playing an ever larger role in engaging employers in literacy, language and numeracy programmes.It is understood that the DfES is also interested in booking some performances. On one occasion, an employee had been unable to read the label and was hospitalised after wrongly mixing two chemicals.The other impetus was Shout it Out, another play devised by the education department of the Theatre Royal Plymouth, and based on the first piece of writing ever done by 38-year-old Sue Torr.