THE Northern Echo recently highlighted the urgent need for engineers companies like Nissan have (Echo Oct 20).

A couple of days later, the paper carried the excellent news that Darlington tops the GCSE rankings (Echo, Oct 25).

One could, therefore, conclude that any initiative offering the opportunity to provide finance and structure to leverage the great educational platform we have into areas that Nissan and Hitachi are looking for would be grabbed with both hands.

I am, therefore, grappling to understand why both our council leader and our MP appear to be against the UTC (University Technical College) as promoted by the Baker Dearing Educational Trust.

This approach has been embraced by towns of all political colours. It would be interesting to hear our political leaders explain their rationale.

From my perspective, it appears they are missing opportunities for Darlington.

Paul Howell, Darlington.