§ Mr. Don FosterTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will introduce regulations to prevent local authorities from funding the cost of any redundancies amongst local authority staff, arising from reduced use of local authority services by schools under the Government's Fair Funding proposals, from the Individual Schools Budget; and if he will make a statement. [68219]
§ Ms Estelle MorrisThe statutory guidance on school financing schemes recently issued by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State does not envisage that redundancy costs should be met from schools' budget shares where the staff in question were not school-based. There would therefore seem to be no reason why local education authorities should wish to include provision for such costs in their Individual Schools Budgets. The Financing of Maintained Schools Regulations 1999 permit the central retention by LEAs of funds to meet redundancy costs which are not properly chargeable to individual schools.