War of words over school funding

A BITTER war of words has flared between the leader of Warrington Borough Council and a senior Labour councillor over the loss of funding for six major school projects in the town.
Coun Colin Froggatt, (right) Labour’s spokesman on education has accused the ruling Liberal Democrat-Conservative administration of “kow towing” to the Coalition government over its school building cut-backs.
He suggests the council should be seeing recompense from the government through the courts.
But council leader Ian Marks (left) retorted: “He is a fine one to accuse us of kow-towing to the government. Perhaps he would like to tell us when the Labour Group criticised the previous Labour government?”
Coun Froggatt said it was apparent that the council had received encouragement from the Coalition government to continue to pursue money under the Building Schools for the Future programme following the election to rebuild and refurbish some of its schools.
He said: “This was both in writing to the council and through verbal advice – hence the council’s decision to seek funding to re-build its special schools.”
Coun Froggatt said £1.8 million which the council had already committed to development projects should be refunded by the government in view of them cancelling the schemes.
“If a refund is not forthcoming then there is ample evidence and legal precedent to pursue recompense through the courts.
“It is not good enough for the leader and deputy leader of the council to just roll over and take what’s coming.
“They should be fighting for the town and the children of Warrington rather than kow towing and becoming apologists for purely party political purposes to a coalition government which has led this town up the garden path.”
Coun Marks said: “The Lib Dem-Conservative administration at the Town Hall will continue to fight for what we believe is best for our young people.
“Our record on exam results and achievement in our schools is excellent despite the poor funding we receive from central government. Sadly our two Labour MPs failed to do anything to improve this low level of funding when their government was in power.
“It would be helpful to people in Warrington if Coun Froggatt could give us an explanation of why the BSF scheme was surrounded by bureaucracy and red tape and why we had to have six different consultants for the BSF projects?
“It is ironic that the only reason we were able to add the two special schools into the BSF scheme was that construction costs on the four original secondary schools had come down so much because firms were desperate for business because of the appalling state of the economy that Gordon Brown’s government had got us into.”