38 more pages of the Wirral Schools Services Limited private finance initiative (PFI) contract with Wirral Council

                                          

I posted the first 17 pages of Wirral Council’s contract with Wirral Schools Services Limited, followed by the next six pages of the contract last month. This took it to the definitions as far as “benchmarking”.

At the weekend I scanned in the rest of the pages that define terms used in the contract (which come to a further 38 pages). This is from page 7 onwards. The next page after that deals with third-party rights.

The Wirral Schools Forum meets tomorrow evening to discuss where to find the £2.3 million of savings to its budget to pay for it. This is not because the price of the contract is going up considerably year on year, but because Wirral Council have decided to stop making a £2.3 million contribution to it each year. In total the annual contract payments are ~£11 million a year. Wirral Council receive an annual grant of £5.472 million towards this and a further £2.972 million from schools for the services under the contract (such as cleaning, caretaking et cetera). This leaves £2.586 million that in earlier years Wirral Council has paid, but next year has decided to cut its contribution by £2.3 million on top of a further £600,000 reduction this year.

It looks like (although it’s not confirmed yet), according to the papers for tomorrow evening’s Wirral Schools Forum (agenda item 3 PFI and Central Budget Review – Verbal Update (Previous report from 8th October attached)) that at least £1 million of this £2.3 million saving will come out of cuts to SEN Top ups/independent school fees (£600,000), statements (£200,000) and support for SEN (£200,000). None of the schools covered by the PFI contract are special schools.

Below are the definitions (from page 7 onwards) and the next page after that deals with third-party rights. Wirral Council plan to publish the complete contract by 31st December 2014 under a new transparency regime (imposed by central government).

If you click on any of these buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people. Thanks: