Cost of fight on schools is £800k

Thursday 25th August 2011, 10:22AM BST.

A legal battle sparked by the scrapping of the Building Schools for the Future scheme, which saw £138 million worth of projects shelved in Sandwell, cost the Government more than £800,000 of taxpayers’ money, new figures have revealed.

The Department for Education spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the legal costs of six councils which successfully challenged its decision to axe the schools rebuilding programme, including £165,000 on Sandwell’s legal bill.

The figures obtained by the borough council were released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The bill of £808,000 includes the Government’s own external legal costs. However, it does not include those of Luton and Waltham Forest councils, which were unavailable at the time of the request for information, meaning it is eventually likely to top £1m.

And it could climb even higher as Sandwell considers a fresh legal challenge, accusing the Government of failing to abide by the court’s ruling to look again at the case for each school project.

Sandwell Council leader Councillor Darren Cooper said: “This bill shows the real winners are the lawyers, certainly not the thousands of children in Sandwell taught in crumbling schools.”

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