HC Deb 19 December 1995 vol 268 cc1016-7W
Mr. Gale

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if she will make a statement on capital allocations for local education authority maintained schools for 1996–97. [7668]

Mrs. Gillan

Local education authorities have today been informed of their annual capital guidelines for schools which, together with supplementary credit approvals, will total £458 million in 1996–97. They have also been informed of the allocations for spending by the governors of voluntary-aided and special agreement schools in their areas—the overall grant to be made available in 1996–97 will be £100 million.

ACGs do not represent the full total of funds available to LEAs for capital expenditure. Authorities arc also able to spend additional sums from capital receipts and from their revenue budgets if they so choose.

Local authorities have received considerable resources in the last few years for building work at schools. The substantial sum available in 1996–97 is a 7.5 per cent. increase on the £426 million available in the current year and should enable local authorities to continue to make significant progress in improving the building stock.

The reserve held back for subsequent issue as supplementary credit approvals includes a substantial sum, £30 million to £40 million, for a new challenge fund which will be allocated towards innovative capital projects involving contributions from other bodies, including the private sector. The Department will be consulting shortly on the criteria against which bids to the challenge fund will be assessed.

In distributing ACGs, I have again given priority to the second and third year expenditure on work covered by ACGs in previous years; projects to provide new school places in areas of population growth—"Basic Need"—and projects to remove surplus places. For 1996–97, we arc allocating a historically high level of cover for commitments£282 million. We are also providing £90 million for basic need—a level of cover equal to 1995–96.

Of the total of £100 million grant for voluntary-aided schools, £62 million has been allocated for capital work and £38 million has been set aside for repairs. The figure of £62 million represents a very healthy 7 per cent. increase in funds available for capital work. More funds have had to he set aside for committed projects this year than in 1995–96 and allocations for basic need are also much higher than in previous years. I am pleased to announced 35 new major projects for the starts list and 27 projects for the design list.

Some £42 million of the ACG total will be allocated in the form of SCAs to LEAs during the course of the year. This figure includes provision for the challenge fund.

Details of individual LEA's ACGs and grant allocations have been placed in the Library.