10:30am Sunday 19th July 2009
By Matt Smith
SOUTHAMPTON City Council is calling on the Government to refund the millions of pounds spent by colleges preparing for rebuilding projects.
The call comes after Whitehall withdrew its funding promises for the schemes.
The council’s ruling Tories said the decision by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to pull the plug on funds to rebuild Taunton’s and Itchen colleges was a “betrayal” by the Government.
They said the buck stopped with Itchen MP and former skills secretary John Denham, pictured.
Taunton’s College wants £800,000 back from the £1.8m it spent on its £35m redevelopment package.
£1m has already been reimbursed.
It is understood Itchen College spent a similar amount on its planned £48m move from its Sholing campus to the Eastpoint Centre in Thornhill.
Southampton City College, Totton College and Brockenhurst College also applied for LSC cash towards multi-million- pound redevelopment projects.
The future of the five projects, worth more than £160m, is now uncertain.
The LSC froze a flagship college building scheme after it ran out of money.
More than 180 colleges applied. Out of the 79 colleges that were given “approval in principle” just 13 have been allowed to continue.
A cross-party council motion deplored the way the LSC promised substantial sums of cash then reneged on their promises causing “much abortive expenditure and serious demoralisation”.
Mark Haysom quit as LSC chief executive as a result of the debacle.
A probe by a committee of MPs last week blamed the LSC for wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer cash through “catastrophic mismanagement”
and concluded Mr Denham’s former department “clearly failed in its oversight duties”.
The committee report said the Government will need to “ensure that compensation arrangements for sunk costs are settled as a matter of urgency”.
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