Issue details

Proposed decision –

1) Allocate £2.5m of the Children’s, Young People and Education capital and revenue budgets to continue to deliver the policy objective of ensuring Chilmington Green Secondary School can move into its permanent buildings in the academic year 2025-26.

2) DELEGATE authority to the Director of Infrastructure in consultation with the Director of Education and SEND, the General Counsel and the Cabinet Member for Education and Skills to enter into any negotiations, contracts or contract variations that may be required. This includes enabling funding provided under this and previous related key decisions 21/00014, 22/00080, and 23/00057 to be used as a collective to deliver the policy objective.

3) DELEGATE authority to the Director of Infrastructure to be the nominated Authority Representative within the relevant agreements and to enter into variations as envisaged under any of these contracts and to take other relevant actions, including but not limited to entering into other contracts or legal agreements, as necessary to implement the decision.

Reason for the decision

The Council has consistently confirmed its commitment to ensuring the new secondary school at Chilmington Green, Ashford can move into its permanent buildings in the 2025-26 academic year.  Ongoing issues with the delivery of the utilities and the access road threaten achieving this policy commitment. Funding is required to ensure sufficient resources are available to achieve the objective, and to contingency plan for an alternative to ensure pupils on roll in September 2025 have access to school accommodation. 

Background

Three previous key decisions have been made in respect of the delivery of Chilmington Green Secondary School:

21/00014 – which provides funding to deliver the utilities and access road, and confirmation that contributions received from the developer to fund the build of the school will be passed to the Department for Education as it is forward funding the build of the school.

22/00080 – which provides the resources to provide a temporary school site and accommodation for the school to open in.

23/00057 – which provides funding to address issues covered by privileged legal advice.

Options (other options considered but discarded)

The Council had an agreement with Hodson Developments (Ashford) Ltd to deliver the road and utility infrastructure required to open the school.  For reasons covered in the exempt key decision 21/0014, this option has been discarded. 

How the proposed decision supports the Framing Kent's Future - Our Council Strategy 2022-2026

The proposed decision supports priorities one and two of Framing Kent’s Future:

Commitment under priority one – Levelling up Kent:

• To maintain KCC’s strategic role in supporting schools in Kent to deliver accessible, high quality education provision for all families.

Commitments under priority two – Infrastructure for communities:

• Through our ‘Infrastructure First’ commitment we seek to ensure that new development provides the appropriate physical and social infrastructure necessary to support new and existing communities’ quality of life.
• To help all Kent’s communities benefit from having a strong social fabric which underpins family, community and personal resilience.

How the proposed decision supports Securing Kent’s Future 2022 -2026: Securing Kents Future - Budget Recovery Strategy.pdf

The proposed decision is compliant with objective 3 of Securing Kent’s Future – the Council has made a policy choice to secure the opening of this school on its permanent site. The DfE are forward funding c£40m of capital investment, which is supporting the developer and the Council with their respective cash flow and in respect of the Council, to discharge its statutory responsibility of ensuring all children have access to a school place.

Financial Implications

The previous key decisions provide £8m towards the delivery of the school.  £2.9m of this is for the costs of temporary accommodation.  £3.1m is allocated as loan funding to the developer to provide the utility and road infrastructure and is to be repaid.  £2m is set aside to deal with issues covered by legal privilege and is expected to be recovered.

These decisions have created “pots” for specific activity.  An underspend against one Record of Decision (ROD) is not necessarily available to support pressure against a different ROD.  It is proposed that this changes, such that the totality of funding can be used to deliver the policy commitment.

A further £2.5m of revenue and capital funding is required to ensure the road and utilities can be delivered, and to provide for further temporary accommodation in the event this proves necessary.  The Council will seek to recover these costs as appropriate.

Detailed funding considerations and the wider financial impact will be set out in an Exempt Report.

The current Basic Need Capital Budget totals £168m (covering the period 2024-27) and will be impacted, at least in the short-term, whilst the legal responsibility for funding the additional costs is resolved and funds recovered. The Basic Need Capital Programme is managed as a series of projects and any additional funding requirement could require re-consideration of other planned activities. However, growing inflationary and other build cost increases including the increased risk of continued use of temporary accommodation supports the progression of this matter as quickly as possible to minimise greater financial costs being incurred.

The Education Service has a revenue budget line for temporary accommodation.  The costs of this proposed decision are expected to be prioritised in 2025-26.