According to the recent modernisation of the VET system in Hungary, a network of integrated regional vocational training centres is under development, financed by the human resources development operative program. During the first phase leading up to the end of 2006, 16 centres were set up (with the integration of 120 vocational education schools and 6 higher education institutions). This will be followed by others: a further 44 centres will be established by 2013. The presentation is based on research started at the end of 2006, aiming to discover the level of partnership existing between these new centres and the economy, and the extent to which these centres have the preconditions, within their respective scopes, to contribute to the development of learning regions. Since innovation, which is the key element within the modernisation of VET - as well as of learning regions - cannot be separated from regional innovation, in which innovation within local communities and the development of local partnership have crucial roles to play, the presentation is planning to explain how and in what ways these new centres can support and utilise or, in the worst case, impede the process of local community- and partnership-building in the case of a school, left out of the new centre, loosing its former power. The presentation provides a summary of the experience learned from the 16 cases and sets out recommendations for further development.