Every adult in County Durham without qualifications will soon be able to face their gremlins and go back into learning. Deputy Business Editor Julia Breen reports.

IN the jungle, he braved leeches and scorpions and spent much of his Army career fighting terrorism. Now, self-confessed adrenaline junkie James Ramsbotham, the new chairman of the LSC, faces a different challenge - improving aspirations and skills in County Durham.

The vice-chairman of Esh Group, a County Durham group of nine construction-related companies employing nearly 700 people, was appointed chairman of the LSC at the beginning of last month - shortly before former executive director Austin McNamara left to join Connexions.

Mr Ramsbotham, along with recently arrived executive director Tom Crompton, hopes his new team will breathe fresh life into the skills base of County Durham, boosting the regional economy.

The former army officer has also been a banker and marketing manager.

Born and brought up in Corbridge, Northumberland, Mr Ramsbotham trained at Sandhurst. His first posting was Hong Kong.

"I spent my time working on the border - it was an awful job arresting immigrants who were trying to escape China," he says.

"Then I was sent to jungle warfare school in Borneo at the age of 18, in 1978, and trained as a jungle warfare instructor.

"It was an amazing time. It's strange, because everyone thought I would be really tanned, but actually you never see the sunlight because of the canopy of trees. It's like living in a twilight world. And at night it's so dark, you just can't see, and if you have to move in the night there are a lot of broken limbs and injuries because the ground is so uneven.

"Every time you took an item of clothing off, you would find a leech there, but once you have had two or three they don't worry you.

"Occasionally, you would get attacked by ants in the night and everyone got bitten at some stage by a scorpion or something.

"But most creatures are much more sensitive to humans and saw us coming long before we saw them.

"Unless you looked for them, you were very unlikely to see a snake because they were away once they sensed us - long before we sensed them.

"Because the air is so still, your sense of smell is amazing. If you were walking behind someone who had brushed their teeth, you could smell toothpaste for hours afterwards. Much of the training was about not washing, because the enemy would be able to smell you from much further away than they could see or hear you.

"I absolutely adored the jungle and could quite happily have stayed there for a very long time."

While in the Army, Mr Ramsbotham studied geography at Durham University, going back into uniform in the holidays, before completing three tours of Northern Ireland in his 12-years in the forces. Not only was he a specialist in counter-terrorism, he also trained recruits.

But one of his favourite times was the two years he spent in Canada working in counter-terrorism before the Calgary Winter Olympics, which included Eddie the Eagle's ski jump and the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

"It was such a community-spirited games because the mayor of Calgary raised enough money for all the Olympian parents to fly over, and the people of Calgary put them up," he said.

"So you had hundreds of Canadians cheering on an athlete no-one had heard of, because everyone on one street had got to know the athlete's parents."

Mr Ramsbotham's experience working with Army recruits gave him a passion for training.

"They were 16-year-olds who had just left home, so literally, for 12 months you become their mother, father, vicar, teacher, social worker, lawyer - absolutely everything to these lads.

"I realised how much difference you can make to people by the way you relate to them at that stage and what a huge responsibility it was."

Experience with the Esh Group, which is piloting a work experience scheme that promises a fifth of 15-year-old participants a job on completion of GCSEs.

He said: "We take 100 kids and whittle them down to 20, but when we trialled it with Deerness Valley School, we found we achieved something far beyond what we set out to do.

"Most of them became completely motivated by the world of work, and the teachers were saying 'we don't know what you've done, but you've sprinkled magic dust on them'.

"Truancies dropped, they started working flat-out at their subjects, projected GCSEs were going up by up to two grades, and one or two kids that had been on the verge of exclusion turned over a completely new leaf.

"I think it makes them realise that the world of work, which had been something to be feared, was now something they knew about and could look forward to.

"On the back of my involvement there was a suggestion from someone to get involved with the LSC."

Time spent as a corporate banker at Barclays in the North-East, which meant he had a good network of business contacts, and time as a trainer at Barclays, also stands Mr Ramsbotham in good stead for the challenge. He said: "County Durham's skills are literally right down there among the worst, and there are some very desperate things to try to sort out.

"There are still too many parts of the region where aspirations are about staying out of the world of work. We need to raise people's ability and make sure they understand that jobs are available in the North-East, and they don't have to move outside the region.

"In the construction sector, we have got some massive gaps - and wages are going up as a result - but it takes so long to train people up to the right level.

"People think, I'll be a plumber because it's good wages, but it actually takes four years or so to train.

"But what is today's skills shortage, will still be there next year or the year after."