Agenda item

The Chair welcomed to the meeting Mel Ormesher, Head of Asset Management.

The report presented explained that as an education authority for Lancashire, the county council had a range of statutory duties to fulfil. The county council's ambition to provide good access, quality and outcomes in education was set out in the Lancashire Education Strategy 2022-25.

The School Planning Strategy 2022-25 delivered on this ambition with the aim to provide the right number of school places, in the right areas, at the right time to meet need. It set out a series of priorities for improvement, areas of growth and reduction in the need for school places, and areas for future action.

The Strategy supported the Corporate Priorities for 2021-2025:

·  Delivering better services

·  Caring for the vulnerable

·  Protecting our environment

·  Supporting economic growth

Lancashire County Council had a strategic responsibility for commissioning education provision in the county. It was its statutory duty to provide a school place for every Lancashire child who wanted one. The focus of the Strategy was the provision of mainstream school places for children and young people aged between 4 and 16 and aligned closely with the Inclusion Strategy for children with special education needs and also the Alternative Provision Strategy.

There were 628 schools in Lancashire of which 482 were primaries and 82 were secondaries which provided mainstream school places across the county. This Strategy was primarily concerned with ensuring that there enough places at primary and secondary schools, identifying where more were needed and where in some cases a planned reduction was necessary.

Lancashire had a mixed economy of schools (academy, voluntary aided, voluntary controlled, foundation, grammar, etc) where many determined their own admission arrangements. This relied on effective collaboration with and between maintained schools and academies in the county to ensure sufficiency of places.

An increasing number of schools were becoming academies which operated independently from the county council. New academies had to be part of an academy trust, which were operated by not-for-profit companies and were funded directly by the DfE. The county council would cooperate with the conversion of any school which was becoming an academy, whether this was a conversion directed by the Secretary of State for Education, or where the governing body of a school chose to do so.

Comments and questions raised were as follows:

·  The county council would reduce the number of children missing education by improving the time taken to secure a place for in-year admissions. This would be managed through a new pupil access system that came in to effect in November 2021, to quicken the pace at which pupils were able to secure a place in a Lancashire school.

·  Learning from success in other parts of the country, the authority would adopt a cultural relocation model of support for families, to gain a sense of belonging and the opportunity to settle. Through the principle of warranted variation, the authority has implemented this way of working in East Lancashire initially, to reduce the cultural shock of relocation and its wider impact on a whole family and effects that could hinder educational achievement and wider aspects of wellbeing. This new provision came into place in November 2021.

·  Members were informed that the area in which a child or young person had priority for a school was known as a Geographical Priority Area (GPA). Living within the GPA did not guarantee a place within a particular school but offered a degree of priority. GPA reviews were carried out annually to reflect changes in an area.

·  The county council had committed to an ambitious carbon reduction strategy. In developing school sufficiency projects it would identify opportunities for decarbonising buildings and delivering sustainable school accommodation.

·  In terms of protecting the environment there was concern over the expansion of schools and more parents driving their children to work. There were emerging problems outside schools regarding car parking. This had an impact on the surrounding neighbourhoods as well as air pollution.

·  There was an opportunity for schools to green their car parks by putting in electric charging points. This would show that Lancashire's education sites were doing something positive.

·  Opportunities to deliver traditional models of school expansion were limited by site constraints or the operation of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts to deliver building services. The county council would consider the implications of such constraints and identify the conditions which might mean a greater focus on the delivery of new schools.

·  If the county council wanted to expand a school in a PFI setting it would have to work within the mechanism of the PFI contracts.

·  It was felt there needed to be a clear plan around innovation projects.

·  Regarding school planning areas, the committee was informed that they were reviewed annually and revisions shared with the DfE for approval. Most recently this had resulted in changes to planning areas in Burnley and Lancaster. The authority also considered places across district and planning area borders to ensure viability of existing schools, as well as a number of places taken up by pupils out of the county and vice versa.

·  Concerns were raised around the viability of planning applications and whether Lancashire County Council should be a statutory consultee particularly given that the county council had the statutory obligation to ensure sufficiency of school placed. It was highlighted that there was a planning reform underway and this was an opportunity for the authority to bid to be a statutory consultee.

·  Concerns were raised that Section 106 monies did not apply to the refurbishment of older school establishments. It was highlighted that the monies were about sufficiency of places and not suitability. However, capital money was available for the maintenance of schools.

The following actions were agreed:

·  Information on the annual review of GPAs to be provided to members.

·  There was a request for ensuring school data, showing the challenges around school place assessments, was readily available for members twice a year.

·  The committee asked for a possible Bite Size Briefings on the policy around Lancashire County Council's retention of its education assets and their disposal and on school parking provision.

·  Information on the reorganisation of education estates to be made available for councillors.

Resolved: That the;

  i.  Report presented be considered and noted.

  ii.  Information on Geographical Priority Areas be presented annually and data be made available on school place assessments twice a year.