Major Investment In highland Schools

Highland Councillors today (Thursday) gave the go ahead to officials to finalise a 30-year contract to build 11 new community schools in a second Education Public Private Partnership. Work is hoped to start soon on the programme with all schools completed by the end of 2008. The successful bidders are Alpha Schools Highland Ltd, a consortium consisting of Morrison PLC and Noble Fund Managers.

After making repayments for 30 years, the schools become the ownership of the Council and will have a further lifetime of between 30-50 years.

The programme, with the projected construction completion dates, is: -

Councillor Andy Anderson, Chairman of the Council’s Education Culture and Sport Committee, said: "I am delighted that the Council has agreed to go ahead with this exciting programme of school building following a huge amount of effort over the past five years. This is the largest ever investment in school and community facilities and it will happen over the next three years. It demonstrates our commitment to improving community infrastructure

"There was no prospect of significantly improving the school building stock in such a short period of time without a very large investment programme through the PPP route.

We hope to finalise a few details with the Scottish Executive and that work can start on the first schools in the very near future."

He confirmed that the spending on the PPP2 Programme was in addition to the £10 million set aside in the 2006-2007 capital budget for school building projects.

In the first Education PPP project, the Council built new primary schools at Spean Bridge and Strathdearn (Tomatin) and new secondary schools at Ardnamurchan (Strontian) and Glen Urquhart (Drumnadrochit).

Note: Over the 30 year period of the contract, the Council will pay a total of £617 million for the schools. This includes the capital cost of building the 11 schools (£132 million) as well as the interest on the capital; inflation over the 30 years; the heating and maintenance of the building over the 30 years; janitorial and cleaning costs over 30 years; and the use of the community facilities outwith school hours amounting to 12,000 hours per year over 30 years.

The Scottish Executive will pay a total of £215 million in Revenue Support Grant to the Council over the 30 year period towards the total cost of this contract.