Millions needed on Newtown schools

Primary schools in the Newtown catchment have the highest overdue maintenance costs in the county, which could mean schools being forced to close due to deteriorating buildings.

Schools across Powys could be forced due to close due to their awful state of buildings. This was the message heard at a recent Cabinet meeting at Powys County Council when Cabinet members decided to add a lack of money to maintain school buildings to their strategic risk register.

There are currently 7 primary schools located within the Newtown cluster who have racked up overdue building maintenance costs of £4.39m. The school with the highest backlog is Maesyrhandir C.P. School, which has a backlog maintenance of £1.57m and a building condition of 'D - Poor' - the lowest rating possible.

Newtown High School also has a backlog maintenance of £7.56 million, which places it 2nd in the ranking across the county. 

It was revealed this year that a total of £25m is needed in the primary sector and £45m in the secondary sector to clear the backlog maintenance.

Finance portfolio holder, Cllr David Thomas explained that the education and planning, property and public protection departments wanted to escalate two risks caused by the:

“Insufficient revenue maintenance and major improvement capital funding is likely to result in unsafe and unfit assets within the school property”.

“The potential consequences are the withdrawal of use of the asset leading to disruption to educational continuity with the partial or full closure to school.”

“Our strategic risk register is key to safeguarding the organisation and building resilience in our services.

“As of the end of quarter two (end of September) there were 13 risks on the strategic register.”

To deal with this problem the report explains that maintenance work will be prioritised and carried out when money is available. The full list of backlog maintenance is below.

Source: https://sway.office.com/8aTHND8fR5JPYfik?ref=email