Rose Wood Primary School Capital Building Project

TS3 Exec Report 19.2.07 Rosewood Primary - Capital Building Programme

ROSE WOOD PRIMARY SCHOOL –CAPITAL BUILDING PROJECT

EXECUTIVE MEMBER: COUNCILLOR PAUL THOMPSON

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: TERRY REDMAYNE

Date: 19th February 2007

PURPOSE OF THE REPORT

1.To seek approval to the changes in the scope of the capital building project to be carried out at Rose Wood Primary School and to the budget adjustment as a result of the project changes.

BACKGROUND AND EXTERNAL CONSULTATION

The Rose Wood Primary School capital building project forms part of the Children,

Families and Learning Capital Building Programme 2005/2007, which was approved by Executive at its meeting held on 28th June 2005.

Approved Scheme

The scope of the project as reported was to undertake improvement works to the building and external outdoor play facilities.

The funding allocation identified for this project in the report was £55,000, which was a condition of sale of land at site 38 Barberry. The cost of the project at this time was only an indicative allocation as feasibility drawings were still being developed and cost estimates were not available. Confirmation of receipt of the developer’s contribution was not received until September 2006.

Revised Scheme & Funding

Subsequently confirmation was received in November that funding was now secured as a Planning Section 106 Agreement relating to Site 31, The Covert, which was £60,000 in favour of Rosewood Primary School. This meant that the original project funding had risen from £55,000 to £115,000. This funding has been received by the Authority.

Legal and Democratic Services, however, identified that the original proposed project linked to education infrastructure, did not fully comply with the legal requirements of the agreements. These specified that the funding was to support the provision of an “additional classroom” at the Rosewood Primary School.

Further feasibility work had to be carried out to incorporate the requirement of the legal agreements. The scope of the project has been amended to include the demolition of the existing double mobile classroom unit and the provision of an extension of the main school building, to provide a permanent classroom and resource base area. This allowed the removal of the mobile unit to be brought forward in Council’s overall programme of removal of temporary classrooms. In order to fund the full cost of the classroom works an additional allocation has been made to the project from existing unallocated formulaic funding within the Capital Programme of £25,000.

The school requested that the proposed original improvement work to the outdoor facilities remain as part of the proposals. The school agreed to allocate £70,800 from their Devolved Formula Capital Funding to contribute towards the overall project costs.

Rose Wood is one of three schools included within the corporately funded school playgrounds project with an allocation of £25,000 towards the cost of the improvements to the outdoor play facilities at the school. Additionally, funding to support this element of the project has been received from the Extended School Capital fund, some £12,000.

It is also proposed to include a priority Disability Discrimination Act project to provide car parking bays for disabled visitors. The funding for this portion of the work, £4,400 is to be met from the School’s Access Initiative budget, which is already part of the CFL Capital Programme, and will achieve economies of scale as part of this larger project.

Sustainability

To meet Part L of the new Building Regulations every capital building project involving building extension work has to include consequential costs on environmental sustainability measures. This is a minimum of 10% of the cost of the extension work. On this project the costs have been set against the replacement of existing windows with double-glazing at a cost of approx £15,000.

Revised Project Costs

The revised Rose Wood project has been through the feasibility process and the cost estimates are shown in the table below:

Table 1

Type of Work /

Original Scheme

£ /

Final Scheme

£
Improvements to
outdoor play
facilities / 55,000 / 69,064
Classroom Extension and
resource area / 150,000
Removal/demolition of mobile classroom unit and restoration to grassed area / 13,736
DDA Car park
improvements / 4,400
Consequential Improvements / 14,960
Total / 55,000 / 252,160

The revised funding and spending profile on this project is shown in appendix 1.

Merging all of these projects together as one contract will provide a competitive and cost effective solution and cause less disruption to the efficient running of the school.

The Authority has autonomy from the DfES to plan the spending of its formulaic funding over a number of years to enable larger and more creative schemes to proceed. The increase in formulaic funding and extended schools can be met from within the approved capital allocation given to Schools, MBC and CFL from the DfES.

There are no revenue implications from this project. All running costs and day-to-day maintenance and repairs are the responsibility of the school and governors, met through the school budget share. Therefore there is no impact on the council.

Subject to approval, the scheme is due to start May 2007 and will be completed by October 2007 with work implemented through Building Design Services.

OPTIONAL APPRAISAL/RISK ASSESSMENT

18.A number of options have been considered as part of the appraisal process, these are as follows:

Option 1 – Do nothing:

This would not achieve the objectives of improving the council’s teaching and learning provision and take up of the Developer’s capital contributions which would have to be returned if not used for the purpose they were specified for.

Option 2 – Implement the original scheme only:

To carry out the outdoor play facilities in isolation would not meet the legal requirements of the Developer’s agreements.

Option 3 – Implement only the classroom extension scheme:

This option would satisfy the legal requirements of the Developer’s agreements. However, the school would not be able to improve the outdoor play facilities to meet national curriculum requirements and suitability improvements to provide the required type and size of outdoor play area to meet DfES regulations.

Option 4 – Implement Comprehensive Scheme – incorporating both the outdoor play facilities and the classroom extension – preferred option:

This provides a comprehensive approach to tackling issues identified at the school, incorporating the outdoor play area and removing a double mobile classroom unit and provision of DDA improvement work as a single “best value”, contract, funded from several sources.

19.The preferred option for implementation is Option 4, as it deals comprehensively with issues at the school and makes best use of available funding.

20.CFL officers in conjunction with Building Design Services have assessed risks associated with individual projects as schools/project feasibility studies are completed. These are:

Late approval of project and or finances

Delays in receiving planning approval

Delays in delivery of materials or furniture/equipment

Lack of available resources to manage the project

OFSTED inspection

SATs tests disrupted

Work not being completed on time

Work not being completed within budget

Work will continue to assess and mitigate risk as the project proceeds to completion.

FINANCIAL, LEGAL AND WARD IMPLICATIONS

21.All funding for this project has been identified from existing capital programme resources (see table in Appendix 1). This report is based on the funding provided by DfES to improve the Education Infrastructure of the Authority. This is provided as SCE(R) Supported Capital Expenditure (Revenue) and SCE(C) Supported Capital Expenditure (Capital) – Capital Grant. The source of the funding is identified in the DfES allocation letter of 20th December 2005.

22. This project has implications for the Coulby Newham Ward.

RECOMMENDATIONS

23.It is recommended that Executive;

i)Approves option 4 and the changes made in the scope of the work to include the outdoor play facilities, the classroom extension, the DDA improvement works and removal of the double mobile unit.

ii)Approves the revision in the funding allocation to the Rose Wood School project option 4 and the impact on the overall CFL Capital Building Programme.

REASONS

24.Agreement of the recommendations are sought to enable the priority projects to be implemented and funding spent within the appropriate DfES time scales.

BACKGROUND PAPERS

25.The following background papers were used in the preparation of this report:

Approval DfES letter of funding allocation 2006/2007 dated 20th December 2005

Middlesbrough School Organisation Plan 2004/2009

Middlesbrough School Asset Management Plan 2005/06

Overview and Scrutiny Board 3004/2005 3rd Quarters Capital Outturn dated 8th March 2005

Executive Report, Children, Families and Learning Capital Programme 2005/2006 dated 28th June 2005

Budget Clinic Report, Children, Families and Learning dated 1st November 2006

Executive Report, Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) – Access Initiative Funding 2006/07 and 2007/08 dated 4th August 2006

AUTHOR: Terry Sutcliffe, Head of Service, Capital and Assets

TEL NO: 728105

Address:

Website:

Appendix 1

Rose Wood Primary School – Capital Building Project

2006/2007

Revised Budget Profile:

Budget Source / 2006/07 £ / 2007/08
£
Formulaic Funding / 24,960
Developer’s Contributions / 115,000
MBC (Playgrounds) / 25,000
School Devolved Formula
Capital / 70,800
Access Initiative - SAI / 4,400
Extended Schools / 12,000
Net Expenditure / 252,160

TS3 Exec Report 19.2.07 Rosewood Primary - Capital Building Programme