Shock 'Underspend' On North's Schools

Despite claims of a lack of cash from Stomont's Department of Education (DE), more than £350m set aside for school buildings has not been used.

A Government spending watchdog, the Audit Office said Stormont's Department of Education had "consistently underspent its capital budget".

In the last five years, over £1.2bn was allocated to the department but total expenditure was only £857m.

To make matters worse, the Auditor General Kieran Donnelly said that even with hold-ups in planning, land purchase and legal challenges, school building work should be speeded up.

The damning report also said some school buildings' potential for community use was "not being exploited".

The news follows an investigation into the design quality of school buildings and the DE's strategic planning and management of the school estate and the fact that many schools in Northern Ireland are not fit for purpose because of years of underinvestment.

The Northern Ireland Audit Office added that half of the estate is not ideally suited to deliver the new curriculum and many buildings need costly repairs.

There is a £292m maintenance backlog - equivalent to £900 per pupil.

The probe by Comptroller and Auditor General Kieran Donnelly - School Design And Delivery - also identified significant problems with the general quality of the schools estate and the planning process for the delivery of the capital building programme.

It noted that DE and the education authorities were taking steps to reduce temporary accommodation but there were still nearly 3,000 temporary units in use.

It also showed that improvements to the schools estate were being hampered by delays in delivering projects, with most current schemes expected to take at least six years to complete from when they were originally announced and confirmed that spending was £353m below budget.

Also thrown up was the fact that there was too many extra school places in the system, with surplus capacity estimated at 54,000 places and that community use was not being fully exploited for the schools' estate property.

In the case of construction, barriers to the delivery of schemes include legal issues around site acquisition, waiting for approval from other statutory agencies like the

Planning Service, reviews of long-term pupil enrolments and a legal challenge to the DE's Construction Framework.

However, the delayed establishment of the Education and Skills Authority (ESA) presented a significant opportunity to address many of the issues raised as, in the projects which were being delivered there was clear evidence of improvements in design quality.

The report said: "There is a pressing need to progress the capital investment programme in order to improve the schools estate and enable the effective delivery of the curriculum."

It added: "Improvements to the schools estate, while previously constrained by a lack of resources, are now being constrained by delays in delivering projects."

However, this afternoon, the Sinn Féin Education Spokesperson John O'Dowd has said that an examination of the Audit Office figures show that the historical and unacceptable process of year-on-year under-spend by the Department of Education of funds set aside for much needed school builds has not only been reduced - but stopped.

"In 2005/06 under Direct Rule Ministers the under-spend was £43m, that figure has been reduced under the governorship of Minister Caitríona Ruane, in 09/10 to zero.

"The additional £13m given to new school builds this financial year is also targeted to be spent by the end of this financial year," he insisted.

See: NI Schools Building Plan List Revealed

(BMcC/GK)