HC Deb 31 January 1991 vol 184 cc585-6W
Miss Emma Nicholson

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science by what formula English counties' individual allocation of capital expenditure on education for 1991–92 was calculated.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what expenditure assumptions he made for commitments to projects in Devon started in 1990–91 or earlier when determining his capital authorisations for Devon for 1991–92.

Mr. Fallon

In determining each authority's annual capital guideline, my right hon. and learned Friend applied the objective criteria set out in his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Mr. Pawsey) on 17 December 1990,Official Report, columns 41–50.

For committed expenditure, account was taken of the second and third year costs of projects and work allowed for in the 1989–90 and 1990–91 allocations and annual capital guidelines for Devon, as in all other English LEAs. For plans to provide new school places in areas of population growth, cost multipliers, reflecting the average cost to authorities of providing a new school place, as well as different regional building costs, were applied to the net deficit of places indicated by each authority in its capital plans. This amount was then phased over three years beginning in 1991–92 in the ratio 35:50:15.

For projects to remove surplus places, full account of authorities' actual cash plans for building works were allowed for when these arose from approved statutory proposals; or in the case of projects unrelated to statutory proposals, where these were cost-effective.

After allowing for a number of projects at special schools and allowing for authorities' liabilities arising from agreed projects at voluntary aided schools the resources remaining for schools were distributed to each authority for improvement/replacement work at schools on the basis of a formula. This formula took account of the authority's cash plans for improvement/replacement work, its pupil numbers and the numbers of substandard places it had.

Capital allocations for local authority further education—LAFE—for 1991–92 were determined as follows:

  1. a. allocations for bids for major building projects—those valued at £200,000 or more—were made on the basis of value for money and in competition with other bids; and
  2. b. allocations for minor works and equipment were made on the basis of weighted full-time equivalent student numbers and the value of bids.

Commitments in LAFE are limited solely to allocations arising from the further years of major building projects which the Department has specifically approved as part of the process which I have already outlined, with the whole being subject to the availability of sufficient funding in any particular year.

The figures set for each of these component parts were then added together to provide the annual capital guideline.