UK Government spends £170 million on consultants in Schools building programme

New figures show that local authorities have spent £170millin on consultants to support their Building Schools for the Future projects (BSF).The Conservatives, request and interpreted the from local authorities, predicted that by the time the secondary school refurbishment programme is completed as much as £1.5billion could have been spent on consultants’ fees


The Shadow children's secretary Michael Gove in a statement criticizing the spend said Shadow children’s secretary Michael Gove said: “In tough economic times it is vital that ministers get good value for taxpayers’ money. But under the government’s bureaucratic school refurbishment scheme, millions has already been spent on consultants with hardly any improvements actually delivered”

“We need a government that is able to get more for less. Ministers have already increased their costing of BSF by £10bn due to their failure to deliver the scheme on time. At a time when family budgets are more stretched than ever, we simply cannot afford this level of mismanagement in Ed Balls’s department.”

Partnership for Schools, the government agency responsible for delivery of the programme, disputed the £1.5bn figure and said that the criticism was misdirected.
A spokesperson for PfS said: “It is important not to confuse how much central government is investing in BSF and what local authorities spend from their own budgets on direct staffing and external advisers, to support their individual projects

“The role of Partnerships for Schools is to give guidance and technical support to local authorities throughout their BSF project. We give an indicative steer that councils should expect to spend around 3 per cent of the total value of their BSF scheme to ensure successful delivery locally.

“It is not, however, for us to dictate the precise amount that each authority should spend as it will vary depending on the scale of their project, existing in-house expertise and any unanticipated issues encountered during the process.”