In last November’s Autumn Statement, chancellor Philip Hammond confirmed that, whether we like it or not, devolution of the adult education budget to city regions is on its way in the next few years.

Opinion across the sector is divided as to whether this is an opportunity or a threat. The principle of devolution is generally welcomed, but certainly there are differing views on the issue of implementation.

I take a positive view of the potential of devolving the adult education budget. It could free up colleges to be more responsive to the needs of local employers and communities. Too often, they have been constrained - for example, by national funding rules and approved qualifications.

We are seeing some really good collaboration between groups of colleges and the emerging city regions. For example, in the West Midlands, colleges are jointly funding posts - seconded to the local authority - that are leading on skills for the area. These collaborations definitely have the potential to create more responsive, localised skills systems, particularly if colleges can become the agenda-setters.

However, there is an absence of clarity about how devolution will be better, a lack of detail about arrangements and a need to deal with potential conflicts of interests.

Opinion is divided as to whether this is an opportunity or a threat

For example, there are suggestions that devolution will require a new national allocation, to ensure that regions get their fair share of funding. But unless effective transitional arrangements are put in place, this could create huge swings in resources between areas and colleges.

Furthermore, the point of devolution is to allow regions to change their funding formula to meet the needs of their residents and local economy. But if colleges are near to different city regions, they could end up having to manage one formula for the students of one region as well as a national formula for others.

And who will meet the administration costs of the devolved adult education budget? The Skills Funding Agency has become pretty lean of late, and we don’t want funds currently used for learning to be top-sliced for administration.

There are also practicalities about the timescale for implementation. The first deals are due for 2018-19, which would require all the detail to be clear by December. Is this realistic and what are the contingency plans?

Finally, there is the issue of potential conflicts of interest in local enterprise partnership (LEP) and city region administrations. For example, will all local authority members be neutral when it comes to prioritising how the budget is divided between independent colleges and their own adult education service? There must be clear rules on accountability and interests to ensure transparency and the delivery of good value.

Clearly devolution of the adult education budget has the potential to improve things. However, with the devil being in the detail, the Association of Colleges has set up a network of colleges from devolution areas to share good practice and develop our proposals on what needs to happen to make devolution work well. We are also calling on the government to publish a Green Paper on skills devolution, giving us and others the opportunity to agree what will happen.

Maybe, if we have that Green Paper, we’ll know whether skills devolution really is an opportunity, or whether it’s just another thing to add to college risk registers.

Ian Ashman is president of the Association of Colleges @ianashmanskills