§ Mr. Jacques ArnoldTo ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on capital allocations for local education authority maintained schools for 1995–96.
§ Mr. Robin SquireLocal education authorities have today been informed of their annual capital guidelines—ACGs—for schools which, together with supplementary credit approvals, will total £426 million in 1995–96. They have also been informed of their allocations for spending by the governors of voluntary-aided and special agreement schools in their areas—the overall grant to be made available in 1995–96 will be £96 million.
Annual capital guidelines do not represent the full total of funds available to local education authorities for capital expenditure. Authorities are 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 1995–96 is a 5.7 per cent. increase on the £403 million available in the current year and should enable local authorities to continue to make significant progress in improving the building stock.
In distributing annual capital guidelines, we 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 1995–96, we are providing historically high amounts to support Basic Need. Of the total of £96 million grant for voluntary-aided schools, £38 million has been set aside for repairs. The remainder is to be provided for capital work with a small element for debt repayment; £15 million of this will support new work to provide for new school places, removal of surplus capacity and a range of improvement and replacement projects. Thirty-seven major projects have been authorised to start and a further 29 to proceed to initial design work. My right hon. Friend and I look to local education authorities and school governors to ensure that the grant is fully effectively utilised.
A total of £45 million of the ACGs total will be allocated in the form of supplementary credit approvals—SCAs—to LEAs during the course of the year.
Details of individual LEAs' ACGs and grant allocations have been placed in the Library.