Highland Council turns its back on St Clement's and Park Primary pupils – again
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Highland Council is set to turn its back on the pupils of St Clement’s and Park Primaries yet again amid one the local authorities biggest ever U-turns as it seeks to ditch both schools from its investment priorities.
Council bosses feel that they need to strip £120 million from the school investment budget and in doing so they will break multiple promises to pupils, parents and staff and halt work on 10 major projects.
In what is the biggest investment drawdown in decades, at the full council meeting on Thursday officials want councillors to agree to stop work altogether on St Clement’s in Dingwall and Park Primary in Invergordon.
The move is likely to be as big an embarrassment for the local authority as it is likely to cause frustration and anger and questions about the running of the council in what is the worst imaginable start for new chief executive Derek Brown.
Three and half years since fire first gutted Invergordon’ Park Primary – followed by a second blaze almost exactly a year later – the council confirmed that it is incapable of providing a new school and removed £10.8 million in funding.
Perhaps most devastating of all, the two decade long wait for a new St Clement’s Special School in Dingwall will continue leaving some of the most vulnerable pupils in the region to return to the “Dickensian” facility.
Instead in St Clement’s case it will get a paltry £100,000 a year for maintenance and £50,000 a year for Park – which has long been bulldozed.
According to the proposals, the upgrade to the Plockton Residence now does not look like it will happen on the same scale either as the original £12 million budget has been cut to just £1.5 million and plans for Dunvegan Primary School have also come to an end as of an original budget of £10.6 just £1.5 million remains.
Tain 3-18 Campus, Nairn Academy and Broadford Primary as well as the proposed £15.5 million new primary at Tornagrain all survived the cull but that will be little comfort to other areas.
Inverness also loses major school projects
A replacement for the dilapidated Charleston Academy was originally budgeted at £14.5 million and the new budget is just £1.5 million while Culloden Academy went from £10 million to £3.5 million.
The sums involved indicate that the original plans are totally unfeasible and the funding that is there is likely to go on either maintenance or what the council calls demountable classrooms – portacabins.
Ness Castle Primary Phase 2 has lost all its funding valued at £7.8 million but Phase 1 will be concluded at a cost of £1.8 million while Beauly Primary School was to get £10.4 million and will now only receive £800,000.
Two proposed schools are to be taken off the table – the £22 million Stratton Primary is gone as is the new East Inverness Secondary which was to have taken some of the pressure of Culloden Academy with a £59 million development.
The rot does not stop there as dozens of other projects across the Highlands have been axed including as the council looks to save on a huge array of projects to bring the overall savings to £127 million.
The £4.8 million community and leisure budget for improvements to Inverness Leisure Centre/Aquadome (£2.6 million) and the Eden Court Theatre Redevelopment (£2.2 million).
Roads will lose £6.6 million as the £5 million Inshes roundabout remodelling is ditched altogether as is the Levelling Up Fund NC500 matching investment of £4 million.
The Aviemore Active Travel Path is no more – losing all its £93,000 funding – while £2.5 million will be saved by abandoning the River Peffery and River Thurso flood protection schemes as well as those in River Nairn and Auldearn Burn, River Gynack; Mill Burn amd Golspie.
The big winners are ports and harbours with £5 million more being spent on Kinlochbervie, Lochinver, and Portree Harbours as well as Uig Ferry Terminal and Link Span.
Infrastructure wish list said to top £566 million
The bottom line the council claims is that it cannot afford to build the schools it needs to because the wish list stood at £475 million of investment over five years when it could afford something around £300 million.
However, following a review by council officers it was found that the final sum at current rates stood at well over half a billion pounds and rose in just four months by £91 million.
The report by the head of corporate finance Brian Porter and interim deputy chief executive Kate Lackie blamed everything from inflation to interest rates to the lack of Scottish Government Learning Estate Improvement Programme (LEIP) funding.
It stated: “The review process has indicated that due to rising capital costs and inflation, the costs of delivering the then capital programme had increased from £475 million at March 2023 to £566 million at July 2023.”
The schools left perhaps worst off are those that were being put forward for LEIP Phase 3 funding: Beauly, Dunvegan and Park primaries and St Clement’s Special School.
They will not be included on the council’s capital programme – except for maintenance – in the next five years.
The report stated: “Ongoing capital funding to progress the current intended scope of the projects is not provided in the proposed capital programme over the next five years.
“This revised budget is a reduced level of capital and is intended for essential maintenance works and health and safety investment. Should circumstances alter, which may include clarity on LEIP Phase 3, then the council would need determine at that point its commitment to these projects and a decision made as to the funding to be allocated, and necessary capital programme reprioritisation that would be necessary.”
