Labour to give £12 million to build new permanent primary classrooms

Veronica Ward The Labour government announced today that Southwark will be given over £12 million for new permanent classrooms. This year dozens of parents were left without an offer of a local school for their child in the south of the borough as the number of applications outstripped the Lib Dem executive’s expectations.

Southwark Labour councillors are now calling for details of how and where the money will be spent so that the classrooms are built by the government’s deadline of September 2011.

Southwark Labour’s Education spokesperson Cllr Veronica Ward said:

“The Government has recognised that there’s a long-term shortage of school places in the borough, despite the Lib Dem Council Leader’s complacent claims that we ‘coped relatively well this year’.

“This is great news and a serious amount of money, which will go a long way to building the extra primary school places that Southwark needs, particularly in Dulwich. The Lib Dem executive now needs to set out how it’s going to spend the money and where the new classrooms are going to be built so that they can be ready for 2011.”

NOTES

The allocations announced by Ed Balls MP today are:

Local Authority	Funding (£)
Barking & Dagenham	18,388,000
Barnet	1,000,000
Birmingham	24,319,000
Blackpool	6,060,000
Bolton	3,320,000
Bournemouth	6,011,000
Bradford	11,009,000
Brent	14,766,000
Brighton & Hove	5,700,000
Camden	1,000,000
Coventry	7,427,000
Croydon	12,834,000
Ealing	4,006,000
Enfield	6,941,000
Haringey	8,570,000
Kingston upon Thames	8,185,000
Lambeth	9,002,000
Leeds	1,762,000
Luton	15,504,000
Manchester	6,808,000
Newham	17,464,000
North Somerset	1,000,000
Peterborough	5,257,000
Redbridge	3,460,000
Richmond	3,327,000
Sheffield	13,778,000
Slough	8,986,000
Southampton	1,000,000
Southwark	12,063,000
Swindon	6,374,000
Thurrock	2,563,000
Trafford	1,000,000
Waltham Forest	4,234,000
Wandsworth	17,902,000
Total allocation	271,020,000