The cost of scrapping the government's controversial adult learning scheme last year is being felt by companies across the UK and the thousands of people they employed.

120 people lost their jobs when Simon Hall's Devon business folded after the government pulled the plug on the Individual Learning Account (ILA) Scheme.

The ILA programme was closed last winter after allegations that fraudsters were claiming government grants for non-existent courses or people.

On Friday, the National Audit Office published a damning report about the way the scheme was run.

Losses

Simon Hall says the effect of the scheme's end on his business, which involved training people to use computers and the internet, was devastating.

He let his 120 staff go and now has losses of thousands of pounds.

"A lot of people who worked for me have lost their jobs, are left with nothing and some are not even working now - nine months later," he said.

He is bitter about the way the scheme was set up.

"It was a shambles. It was a good idea - to encourage people to come back to learning.

"But there was no planning, no safeguards to check learning providers were providing the training they said they would."

'Dodgy practices'

Mr Hall says some students who signed up with his company told him they had been approached by other "learning providers" on the streets.

"We started becoming aware of some dodgy practices going on around July last year.

"People were told they could have a course for nothing, just by signing up there and then, but all they got was a CD."

He said he expected to be audited and had kept detailed records of the training of his students, but there had never been an audit.

Oxford pub landlandy Christina McGrath signed up for an ILA, which entitled her to a subsidised course.

But when she went to register for her computer course, she found her learning account had already been raided.

"I felt gutted because when I asked if I could still do the course, they said probably not because the money had been accessed by someone else and there was nothing they could do about it," she said.