Plans to create two flagship academies in Dudley remain on course for now despite spiralling costs, education chiefs have pledged.

Crestwood and Pensnett schools will merge to form a single academy on the Crestwood site.

Castle High School will also be placed on the Government’s lucrative academy programme. The “super schools” are due to open in 2009. However, cabinet member for children’s services Liz Walker revealed today (FRI) the costs of setting up the schemes were threatening to fly out of control.

She said the final bill could reach £1.5 million and warned: “We are committed to the academies, for now.

“But if the costs become any more exorbitant, we will pull out because we just haven’t got the money.”

The academies will be sponsored by the Christian charity The Oasis Trust.

Earlier this week the council agreed to defer a separate decision on the Government’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

If it was placed on the scheme, the authority would secure £200 million of funding to revamp and rebuild the borough’s other schools.

But the council’s cabinet voted to delay Dudley’s involvement in the programme until after 2010.

They decided that the costs of submitting a bid in time for the 2009 wave of BSF funding were too high.

The move comes as something of a surprise after Mrs Walker described missing out on the previous round of cash as a “real kick in the teeth”.

However, she told Wednesday’s meeting: “I’m very reticent to drag the council into something that could be a mortgage of the future.”

The council had hoped to be named as one of eight throughout the country to be fast-tracked onto the BSF programme in June, with work starting on crumbling schools immediately.

But Dudley was not on the list which was published by schools minister Jim Knight.

The news that the money will now not be available until after 2010 at the earliest is likely to be greeted with dismay by headteachers.

In June of this year, Holly Hall Maths and Computing College head Graham Lloyd said that the delay in BSF funding was “a disaster for Dudley”.