I challenged Cllr Ossie Johnson, Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People’s Services yesterday with the question at the bottom of this post about school repair funding.

Thankfully, the Council has now agreed to our local Lib Derm proposals to draw up plans to provide loan schemes to schools so that they can carry out work to crumbling buildings. SUCCESS!!! However:

Cllr Johnson stopped short however of agreeing to put any direct council funding into our school buildings. Building which are the direct responsibility of the Council.

He said that the Coalition government had refused his request for funding for one school, in Seaham. A complete nonsense given that the coalition provided £14m and the school is currently being built as we speak! He also sought to defend the fact that the council is currently spending £689,000 on the old Seaham school which will be demolished next year – blaming everyone else other than the Labour-run council. Apparently the school is in such a dangerous state that part of it will fall down if not repaired. Given that it is Labour which is responsible for this building and has been for decades, it is therefore Labour which is to blame for this.

And Mr Johnson complained about lack of government funding but did not answer my follow up question where I challenged the way in which Durham Council is spending the money government gives it.

It appears millions of pounds of government funding may not have gone to pay for repairs over the years because DCC takes a proportion of the money to pay internal council management fees. I am also not convinced we are getting the best value for the work which is done. Your Lib Dem councillors will not let this issue drop.

It is very clear that the Council is failing in its duty to ensure our young people are taught in properly repaired schools and whilst as Lib Dems we will campaign for the government to provide the Council with extra funding for new schools and for repairs, we must also make sure that the money which is given is properly spent, and where the council has the resources that it puts extra funding in.

For this reason, after a week of trying to get the figures on the total repair requirements for each school I yesterday sent every single County councillor the full list of backlog repairs. Now no Labour council can say they didn’t know the scale of the problem, and perhaps they too will want money spent more wisely and at least some funding put in from the £160m in council reserves!

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