School governing bodies are reportedly “utterly terrified” of the potential implications of Liverpool Council ’s costly energy contract mishap.
Warbreck Cllr Alan Gibbons made the claim that school leaders were fearing the worst for their budgets in the aftermath of the mix up earlier this year as the local authority’s education cabinet member admitted to a committee on Tuesday that it still does not know the full extent of the cost. A string of mistakes at the Cunard Building have added as much as £16 million on to the city's energy bill.
Council leaders were not informed that the electricity provider it was dealing with had withdrawn from the commercial market, leading to the local authority - and other city institutions - being placed on a far more expensive contract. The same energy deal provides electricity for Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service and maintained schools across the city.
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Last month, the chair of governors at Northcote Primary School in Walton suggested the school was facing the prospect of job cuts after its energy costs had soared to 500% - partly because of the mistakes made at the council. He said the pressures were 'unsustainable.' Questioning cabinet member for education and skills, Cllr Tom Logan, Cllr Gibbons said: “Schools have no responsibility whatsoever for this, governing bodies are utterly terrified of implications of this, we ended the school year with a Damocles sword over their heads and I don’t think this can continue.”
Cllr Logan said that the position set out by deputy mayor and former finance lead, Cllr Jane Corbett, that the council would support schools remained. He said: “We straight away made our political desire to cover the costs of any mistakes made.
“I think we communicated that really well with schools, there is this political will to cover the cost.” The Princes Park ward member did concede however that “we still don’t know what the cost is”.
He added: “No one person can say we’ll spend X amount of money on this thing when we don’t know what X is. We don’t have the authority to do that and it would be potentially misleading but the political will is absolutely there.”
Addressing Cllr Gibbons’ comments on governing bodies being terrified, Cllr Logan said “on the whole, secondary schools are worried, really worried, simply because of the size” but primary schools are “largely less worried, not that they’re not concerned, but they’re relatively satisfied with our response and communication precisely because we have communicated to them you will not be left to deal with this yourselves, you will not be left with the bill”.
Cllr Logan said the council needed to work out what did the mistake cause but it did not know that yet. He added: “Once we know that amount, we figure out how we’re going to pay for it and we can make concrete assurances that is exactly what’s going to happen.”
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