A Conservative government could cancel school building schemes, even if they have already appointed a preferred bidder, a shadow minister has admitted.
At an event this morning shadow schools minister Nick Gibb was asked by a headteacher whether planned BSF schemes would go ahead even while a Tory government battled to cut the budget deficit. "If a scheme has got to financial close, that's it, it's going to happen," Gibb answered.
But pushed to make similar guarantees for schemes earlier in the programme, the shadow minister said: "What we're saying is if financial close has been reached, it will go ahead." If not, "then it won't be guaranteed."
Decisions about whether to continue with projects will be made on a "case by case basis."
Gibb stressed that this didn't mean schemes would be cancelled en masse. "But I'm not shadow chancellor, and shadow ministers are told on pain of death not to make spending promises."
The government's own projections show capital spending falling by half from next year, he said. With as little as £1 million a headteacher can "transform the fabric of his building.”
"We think [BSF] is a hugely wasteful approach to procuring new buildings," he added. "It's very top down, very bureaucratic and costs a huge amount of money." The centrally planned nature of the programme "works against the direction we want to go in."
Gibb was speaking at a seminar organised by law firm Winckworth Sherwood on the schools sector under a Conservative government.