Derbyshire County Council approves nearly £1.3m of funding for primary school’s ongoing ‘rebuild’

Pictured is Bramley Vale Primary School
-Credit: (Image: Google)


A council education chief has told how nearly £1.3m of extra funding needed for an ongoing costly renovation scheme at a Derbyshire school will not have a direct impact on the authority’s battle to manage a forecast multi-million pound budget deficit. Derbyshire County Council is under-taking a ‘partial-rebuild’ project for Bramley Vale Primary School, on York Crescent, near Bolsover, which was originally billed at £5.5m in 2021 but it has incrementally increased to a total of nearly £9.8m including the latest £1,285,780 council contribution.

Cabinet member for education, Cllr Alex Dale, said the project has become more challenging due to the school’s state of disrepair and inflation costs but he insisted the latest council investment is being sourced from capital funding and this will not affect the council’s forecast multi-million revenue budget deficit for the 2024/25 financial year. He told a recent Cabinet meeting: “We do want to resolve this as quickly as we can and the most logical thing is to use the funding but it’s capital funding. It is not going to have a direct impact on our revenue budget.”

Derbyshire County Council is currently addressing a forecast budget deficit of around £40m for the 2024/25 financial year which it has blamed on reduced Government funding, the financial impact from the Covid-19 pandemic, high inflation rates, rising costs, the cost of living crisis, and a growing demand on services. And its Cabinet approved at a meeting on September 18 the use of £1,285,780 of capital funding for the school scheme – which is money specifically allocated to improve the council’s assets – and which Cllr Dale says is therefore not going to have a direct impact on the council’s already tight revenue budget.

READ MORE:Primark's first-ever UK store celebrates 50 years since opening in Derby

READ MORE:Leading fashion retailer reopens this weekend in new location in Derbion after 5-month wait

The £1,285,780 is to be used on further newly-identified and necessary structural work on the school hall so the school can eventually be fully operational for the pupils to return which means there is now an increased overall budget cost of nearly £9.8m. Cllr Dale told the meeting: “This quite a challenging project we have been dealing with for quite a few years now. Bramley Vale is in the Bolsover district close to Doe Lea in quite a deprived area.”

He added: “The school is quite a run-down building in need of repair work so we took the decision to do what we called a ‘partial-rebuild’. In essence, it is a ‘full-rebuild’.” Cllr Dale explained the project has faced construction cost inflation and additional classrooms have had to be put in while the pupils have been based at a temporary learning village .

He added that it has now been discovered that the school hall is not in a good situation and needs a new roof, structural steel work, and replacement windows and doors so the scale of the project has had to be expanded. Cllr Dale said: “There has been a temporary school learning village. There have been changes with different amounts we have had to allocate for construction cost inflation and additional classrooms we have had to put on so the project has increased from the original form we put in.”

The council considered adding a further phase to the overall project but it was felt this option would have severe financial implications as the pupils would need to remain in the temporary learning village for longer which would create even more project costs. So council officers recommended the best cost-effective way forward would be the allocation of additional funding to complete the project as soon as possible and to ensure the return of pupils to a fully operational school which will be ‘beneficial to pupils’ learning and staff wellbeing’.

Council Leader, Cllr Barry Lewis, said: “Building projects of this nature pose unforeseen costs and there can be more than one or two because of the age of the buildings.” The Cabinet agreed to approve the use of an additional £1,285,780 of funding for the project to ensure its completion and to eventually allow the pupils to return to the school.