LIVERPOOL Council has offered a multi-million pound city council rescue package to the city's schools – but only if they promise not to become a centrally-funded academy.

The Daily Post can reveal that Liverpool council will, in September, unveil plans to make up to £75m available to transform schools in the city – but those benefiting from revamps could face legal action and have to pay the money back if they cut free from town hall control.

The council had recruited a taskforce of leading business figures to help produce a scaled-down “Plan B”, after the coalition axed Labour’s £350m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme last summer.

City leaders were hopeful the Government would match up to £75m the local authority has pledged to raise through sales of assets, empty school buildings, private finance and borrowing.

But, as the Daily Post revealed, this is in tatters as the Government rejected the proposal and will provide just £12.34m a year until 2015 for routine maintenance of the city’s 170 schools, which equates to £72,588 if split equally.

City leader Cllr Joe Anderson confirmed the council would not be beaten by the Government’s snub and will press ahead with a rescue plan.

However, he warned schools profiting from the upgrades and new buildings must make a formal undertaking they would not take the money and run by becoming government-funded academies.