In an article in the Northern Echo today, a member of the Durham County Council (DCC) Education Select committee has described the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme as an example of Labour’s ‘tragically wasteful spending’, with the council spending over £5.7m on ‘non-building’ costs.
The considered response of David Theobald, DCC’s project director is: “Meeting these costs was a necessary requirement in order to take part in the programme and secure the very substantial capital funding that was made available to our schools”. Which is exactly the point being made against Labour’s BSF programme, that it is too complicated, too costly and to quote a recent independent report ‘not fit for purpose’. There might well have been over 3000, much needed, schools built, but to burden generation to come with the debt was not the way. This was just another example of Labour failings.