The Department for Education has still not given any details or timetable for building the new school that will bring together Marlborough’s St Peter’s junior school and St Mary’s infants’ school. Now a further delay in the project looks almost certain.
It was announced in May this year that the government had approved the scheme and would provide funding.
Marlborough News Online has been told the early indications are that the new Marlborough school to be built south of George Lane will not be in the first tranche of school building that Education Secretary Michael Gove announced.
Disappointingly, this probably means that building will not start until 2015.
The go-ahead for the Marlborough scheme was announced as part of the coalition government’s two billion pound Priority School Building Programme (PSBP) using private finance initiative (PFI) money for the majority of the 261 schools on the list. Forty-two schools – presumably the ‘first tranche’ – were to be started immediately using a £400 million capital fund.
However, the ‘priority’ seems to have gone out of this “priority” scheme. While a rush to kick-start the building of houses and conservatories has recently been announced and Mr Gove’s new Free Schools have got their funding without delay, the PSBP has not yet appointed its ‘funding advisers’. These advisers will “provide advice on the structuring of capital markets or other financing solution for the PSBP”.
So the money for the most of programme is not there – not, it would appear, is it nearly there. The closing date for those interested in becoming ‘funding advisers’ for this programme is midday on Monday, September 24. The PSBP was launched in July 2011.
Wiltshire Council, which is responsible for St Peter’s and St Mary’s, and backs the merger of the two schools in a new building, had no statement to make on this development in the project’s long saga.
Wiltshire Councillor Peggy Dow told Marlborough News Online: “I am bitterly disappointed, how can they justify this decision? We have the plans and the land all ready to go. We have been promised the new school again and again. We think we have got everything in place then the children of Marlborough are let down again.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The appointment of technical advisers has no impact on the Priority School Building Programme. This is a five year programme and the Education Funding Agency is already working with the first of the schools to be rebuilt.
The order that schools will be rebuilt takes into consideration those in the worst condition and ensures that the timing of building work is viable for those delivering and financing the schools.”
A conference is being held in London on September 26 to discuss the future of the PSBP. Among the speakers will be representatives from the Education Funding Agency and the Treasury who have been instrumental in moves to re-design PFI contract terms.
Marlborough News Online is seeking further reaction to this news report.
The Diana makes her way home from her successful voyage to the Paralympics
