Long term conditions often necessitate long term care. In many cases, giving control of their conditions to the patients themselves produces the best outcomes. Such patient education and the acquisition of self-management skills can be time consuming and the evidence suggests that the process is often not undertaken by doctors. Sometimes it is delegated to nursing colleagues, but all health professionals are in short supply. Patients carry credibility as a resource and this project is designed to determine, by means of a multi-centre randomised controlled trial, whether well trained lay educators can deliver training in self-management education to others with asthma, with outcomes equivalent to those achievable by a nurse.