Mar 4, 2009
Lib Dems Warn of Threat to PFI Programme
The government is to lend up to £2bn of taxpayers’ money to firms building schools and other public projects under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).
Cllr Gareth Epps, Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate for Reading East commented: “For months Liberal Democrats in Reading have been warning that the Government’s PFI schools programme would need bailing out. Labour remain wedded to a PFI model that is completely wrong. This latest move looks like little more than window-dressing. We have to wonder if this scheme will ever find its way as far as Reading.”
Cllr Kirsten Bayes, Lib Dem spokesperson for Education on Reading Borough Council added: “Reading’s secondary schools have been waiting years for these investments, and once again there are question marks over the financing. This is a deeply flawed scheme, as we have said so from the beginning, yet we have been met with studied Labour complacency. We are very concerned at the impact these problems could have on children’s learning.”
Editor’s Notes –
- Despite recent claims (from a reply given to a written question at the 27 Febuary Council meeting) made by Labour’s Lead Member for Education, Cllr Jon Hartley, that the Building Schools For the Future programme(BSF): “will enable us to transform all state secondary schools within the Borough…and will also provide the opportunity to build in the extra school places that will arise from the current Admissions Review process.”
Reading Borough Council is still no closer to benifiting from Building Schools For the Future Programme.
- Background to the story can be found here: at the BBC and in the Guardian
