MORE than £400,000 of unspent education cash is be clawed back by Liverpool City Council to help fund redundancies.
The money will come from 20 schools which have breached government guidelines for how much they can keep in reserve at any one time. Liverpool council says the clawback is the largest demanded by any authority in the UK to date.
Around £210,000 of the £470,668 will be used to help finance redundancy packages for teachers who lose their jobs when schools close or merge.
The rest will be put towards the multi-million pound Building Schools for the Future programme, expected to change the face of Liverpool’s education system over the next decade.
The Daily Post first revealed in November, 2006, that the city council planned to use government powers to stop schools from holding back too much cash in bank accounts.
A total of 44 are believed to have exceeded Government guidelines which demand no more than 8% of annual budgets be kept to one side.
Many of the schools have now submitted new plans to spend the cash, with projects including new playgrounds, computer suites, PE facility improvements and building repairs.
Of those 44, four are still to be visited by council inspectors, while half of those visited – 20 – will be told to pay money back.
The clawback will be deducted from their annual funding agreement, due in April.
The inspectors found that many of schools were holding money back because they expected to get less in future because pupil numbers were falling.
A spokesman for the department for children, schools and families said the Government expected funding, which is allocated per pupil, to be spent on the pupils it was intended for.
He added: “We are pleased to see Liverpool making use of the legislation, which is designed to make sure money allocated for pupils is actually spent on them.”
A spokesman for the city council said: “We believe that the magnitude of the proposals is by far the greatest amount to be clawed back to date from any authority in the UK.
“Officers believe those schools identified for claw-back can afford the proposed one-off deductions; greater deductions to those proposed will cause unnecessary difficulties. There was no evidence to suggest that schools were ‘hoarding’ money.”
The school with the largest amount saved for no obvious reason was Gateacre Comprehensive, which the council decided should pay back £227,000. The council spokesman added: “The school is part of the first phase of Building Schools for the Future, which involves moving to a new site and a new-build school.
“The head teacher and govern- ing body have not wished to invest in capital works unless they are of an immediate health and safety issue, as they do not wish to spend available funds on the old site rather than the new site.”
Government guidelines stipulate secondary schools should never have more than 5% of their annual budget saved up, while primary and special schools can have 8%.
The council last year asked three schools – St Julie’s High, in Woolton; Broughton Hall High, in West Derby; and Hope special school, in Netherley – for a total of £200,000 back.
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