1,600 school places "need to go" (From This Is Cheshire)

1,600 school places "need to go"

1:43pm Tuesday 20th May 2008

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ABOUT 1,600 places need to be removed from Cheshire schools each year by 2012, says Cheshire County Council.

The authority says the places need to go to keep pace with falling student rolls.

The figures represent 800 places per year at both primary and secondary level.

A 75-page Children's Services report said the county council's Transforming Learning Communities (TLC) policy was removing surplus places.

However it stressed that they were insufficient, and were not being removed quickly enough, to keep pace with "the changing demographic profile of Cheshire."

The TLC process has significantly reduced surplus places in five areas including Crewe and Nantwich and Knutsford, Wilmslow and Poynton.

It is now under way in the area taking in Alsager, Congleton, Sandbach and Holmes Chapel.

County councillor Sylvia Roberts is chairman of the panel which produced the report.

"Empty school places represent a waste of scarce resources, and that affects the money schools receive," she said.

"TLC potentially releases additional funding back into schools' budgets.

"Cheshire does not have large amounts of capital resources, and is not expected to qualify for Government funding from Building Schools for the Future until 2016.

"Any changes following TLC reviews which require major building works have to be funded through reinvestment of capital receipts and prudential borrowing.

"Therefore it is even more important that scarce financial resources are deployed in the most effective way."

The panel is recommending inviting local solutions to the problem of falling pupil rolls before undertaking consultation in the area affected.

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