Dargavel Primary School opened in 2022 with places for 548 children.
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Published
NOTEBOOK BY BILL HEANEY
A council that miscalculated the need for school places on a new housing development must be open about the wider impact of its £60 million mistake, a report from Scotland’s public spending watchdog has said.
Renfrewshire Council was branded “grossly incompetent” after it underestimated the demand for Dargavel Primary School in Bishopton, a school to which a number of West Dunbartonshire families moved when the new housing estate there was completed.
Just across the Erskine Bridge, the school opened in 2022 with a capacity of 548 pupils but forecasts suggest 1,100 spaces will be required in the next decade.
The Accounts Commission has released a report praising the council’s efforts to rebuild the trust of local people but called for transparency over the potential impact on council finances and other services.
It appears the local authority attachment to being part of Nicola Sturgeon’s Secret Scotland’s “whatever you say, say nothing” has crossed the bridge from West Dunbartonshire, where it has also been adopted enthusiastically.
The report stated that it is now estimated that it will cost £60 million to rectify the failings of the school project.
According to the Accounts Commission, the council needs to “develop a financial plan that sets out actions to mitigate the additional costs and be clear on the wider impacts on services”.
The school was built to meet demand for places with a new 4,000-home development being built on land owned by BAE Systems.
Renfrewshire Council then revealed a planning error meant a new primary school and high school extension at Park Mains High School in Erskine would be needed to meet increasing demand.
A new deal was done with BAE Systems to transfer two further pieces of land on the site of the former Royal Ordnance factory in Bishopton to the council for £1.
One of these was to be an 8.5-acre site for a new primary, the other is a 1.5-acre extension to the existing school, allowing it to increase pupil numbers.
Dargavel Primary is at the heart of a development with more than 4,000 homes planned.
An independent review found the council approached negotiations with the landlord in an “amateur manner”, and a 60% increase in housing at the site from the original plan was to be served by only a 30% increase in the planned number of primary school places.
Contribution deals for the new school struck with developer BAE Systems were so “grossly inadequate” that, as the housing development expanded, BAE’s payments to education per child reduced.
A damning investigation by David Bowles, a former chief executive of four councils, exposed the “gross incompetence” behind the errors and made a series of recommendations.
The Accounts Commission said it was too early to conclude on the impact and effectiveness of action taken by the council in response to the Bowles report, but that it would continue to monitor the council.
Andrew Burns, deputy chairman of the Accounts Commission, said the council had to address the culture that led to the failures.
He said: “To help ensure they fulfil their scrutiny and decision-making responsibilities, councillors must have access to, and take up, appropriate training and development.
“This is vital to ensure historic failures of leadership and governance at the council are not repeated.”
He told BBC Scotland News that the community in Bishopton and the council were “confident that the monies can be found” to provide the required school places.
“It is an historic error which the current council, to their credit, are rectifying, but they need to be absolutely clear about the financial and service impacts of finding that gap because £60 million, by anybody’s terms, is quite a substantial sum of money,” he said.
“We absolutely recognise as a commission that the council has made good progress, they have been engaging with the local community and we’re just really urging them now to make sure that progress is sustained over the medium to longer term and that the community can be as assured as possible about where the £60m is going to come from.”
The council will have to submit a best value report outlining their progress and medium-term financial plan to the commission by December, he added.
A council spokesperson appeared to play down the seriousness of what has happened. The spin doctor said the council had “noted the comments from the commission and said the additional costs had already been factored into our planned borrowing to fund our long-term capital investments”.
The spokesperson added: “The future impacts of these additional costs are being considered through the wider financial planning continually taking place to ensure the council remains financially stable over the coming years.”
The spin doctor predictably did not expand on the suggestions that the council should be more open and transparent as recommended by the Audit Commission.
Andrew Burns, deputy chairman of the Accounts Commission, said the council had to address the culture that led to the failures.
He said: “To help ensure they fulfil their scrutiny and decision-making responsibilities, councillors must have access to, and take up, appropriate training and development.”
That is an exercise in which West Dunbartonshire Council should join although previous attempts to enter into joint operations with other authorities such as Inverclyde Council on roads ended in abject failure.
Top of page picture of Erskine Bridge by Robert Beacon