Increased demand for primary school places has forced councils to find an additional £1bn to plug a funding shortfall, council chiefs have reported.
New research published today by the Local Government Association (LGA) finds three quarters of councils have not been allocated sufficient government cash to create the extra school places needed between 2011/12 and 2016/17.
To manage this insufficiency of resources, local authorities variously borrowed money (38%), spent cash that was previously earmarked for other building programmes (22%) or used monies allocated capital programmes for renovating dilapidated classrooms (50%) or used money from developers (67%) – the survey found.
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