by business editor Trevor Sturgess

As expected, the South East England Development Agency is to be swept away in a cull of 192 quangoes.

The Government confirmed today that SEEDA, which has a regional office in Chatham Maritime, and seven other regional agencies would be scrapped in a "bonfire of quangoes".

Some 380 quangoes will be retained, with a further 118 merged into other organizations. Many tasks will be returned to Whitehall. It is unclear how many jobs will go.

SEEDA has already cut its workforce from 450 to 270 in anticipation of the axe. Its budget was slashed in the summer.

But chairman Rob Douglas said SEEDA would continue to invest in Kent.

"We still have ongoing programmes and we will continue to deliver them," he said recently.

Tasks carried out by SEEDA will be switched to a Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and other bodies.

Other quangoes for the scrapheap include the Union Modernisation Fund Supervisory Board and the Advisory Panel for the Local Innovation Awards Scheme.

The Office for Fair Trading is to merge its competition functions with the Competition Commission.

But some quangoes at risk have been spared. They include Acas, the Advisory, Concilation and Arbitration Service, which has an office in Paddock Wood, UK Trade International and the Export Credit Guarantee Department.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude announced their fate.

He said: "We know that for a long time there has been a huge hunger for change.

"People have been fed-up with the old way of doing business, where the ministers they voted for could often avoid taking responsibility for difficult and tough decisions by creating or hiding behind one of these quangoes.

"Today's announcement means that many important and essential functions will be brought back into departments, meaning the line of accountability will run right up to the very top, where it always should have been."

Union leaders described the abolition of public bodies as "short-sighted, undemocratic and a waste of public funds".