Issue - meetings

To consider the report of the Corporate Director Education.

The Chair and Councillors J.C. Morgan, and T. Smith declared an interest in the following item and upon advice from the Monitoring Officer remained in the meeting. Therefore, the Vice-Chair, Councillor J. Holt took the Chair.

Consideration was given to the report of the Corporate Director of Education which was presented to seek the views of the Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee, in relation to the proposal to consult upon the creation of a new 210 places Welsh-medium primary school in the Tredegar/Sirhowy valley.

The Director of Education spoke to the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.   The Education and Learning Scrutiny Committee would be statutory consultees upon the proposal. 

In response to a Member’s question regarding the £6.2m allocated by the Welsh Government, the Director of Education said the allocation had been made on an ‘in principle’ basis and earmarked for this initiative.  There had been recent dialogue with the Welsh Government indicating that this allocation was still available for use within Blaenau Gwent, subject to the consultation.  The Member had concerns that if the consultation goes against the proposal the Welsh Government would look to have the £6.2m back. The Director said a lot of work had been undertaken by the Education Transformation team to access the capital funding, and that clearly it was a priority within the WESP to increase the numbers of Welsh learners to meet statutory obligations.  There was a now a need to formally seek stakeholder views as part of the consultation process before formally taking the proposal forward.

A Member enquired if the school was to be built in phases as only 48 places would initially be used leading up to the 210 places over the next six years.  The Director said that, subject to approval of the proposal, Technical Services had indicated that from a capital cost perspective it would be better to have one contract for construction of the school, and then subsequently open aspects of the school as learner capacity increased.  

The Education Transformation Manager said there were opportunities for phasing that would be looked at, and subject to the outcome of the statutory processes, a detailed analysis around the costs and benefits associated with the phasing and the development of the proposal would be considered.

With regard to the site investigation work already carried out, a Member enquired regarding the budget for those works.  The Director explained those costs had been charged against the Education Capital programme and were minimal costs i.e. mining investigations and desktop studies that would be charged back to the capital cost associated with the initiative.

A Member commented that he supported the consultation going forward and only when the facts were put before Members could a decision be reached regarding this proposal.

Another Member said he supported the consultation and hoped it would be Blaenau Gwent wide with every school, and staff and parents involved.  He said that capital resources to build the school was one thing, but he had concerns with  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5