Three senior Education Authority (EA) representatives were yesterday unable to confirm what funding pot a £1.33m extension for Lisneal College has come out of — days after being asked the same question by the Belfast Telegraph.
At an Education Committee meeting, EA chief executive Richard Pengelly admitted that the organisation needs to conduct a “lessons-learned exercise” in relation to errors that were made in the wake of the Lisneal funding controversy.
This newspaper revealed that Lisneal received £1.33m for an extension, including three classrooms and a dance theatre, two months before funding was approved for an NIFL standard pitch.
The pitch at Lisneal College
Mr Pengelly, along with Donna Allen, interim director of operations and estates at the EA, and Roger Sayers, assistant director of infrastructure and capital development at the EA, appeared in front of the Education Committee to give evidence on the minor works transactions process following controversy around funding for the Derry college.
The CEO began by telling the committee that no formal application process is needed for priority-one works and suggested there are separate processes for the non-controlled sector.
However, the Department of Education’s own website appears to contradict that point. It states that ministerial priority one — i.e. minor — works that meet inescapable statutory requirements “require the submission of an ‘unavoidable’ minor works application form, which can be obtained via a request”.
The website clearly adds: “Unavoidable Minor Works applications for schools within the controlled sector are to be made to the EA.”
Read more
After changing details on its website in the wake of the Lisneal story, the EA says minor works “typically cost from £1,000 up to £1m”. It also removed any reference to projects being prioritised due to greatest need.
The EA references an NIAO audit report from last November titled Managing the Schools’ Estate. However, in the same document the NIAO refers to minor works being capped at £500k.
Mr Pengelly said the Lisneal pitch was a health and safety risk and admitted that a statement claiming the pitch was out of operation since 2019 was wrong, saying they “didn’t have the opportunity to do all the checks that they would normally do” as it was rushed out on a Friday night amid criticism.
“We got that wrong. We hold our hands up. We’re sorry for that. It shouldn’t have happened,” he said.
“I think most people along the way have got something wrong about this. Uniquely, we have held our hand up and said: ‘We got something wrong.’ I’m not surrounded by others who have done that.”
Lisneal College.
Chair Nick Mathison said there is little understanding of how the minor works system operates. He asked if the EA was satisfied that projects being put into the priority-one pot are indeed priority one in terms of being critical for the delivery of education.
Mr Sayers, the director who signed off on the pitch and a £1.33m extension at Lisneal, said the EA is “confident” projects being taken forward are priority one and are reviewed along the way.
Mr Mathison said priority three is about unmet curricular needs and questioned whether a pitch being out of action is just “an unmet need”?
He spoke of principals in schools that are “literally falling apart”, those who don’t have changing rooms, as they’ve all been “condemned”, and rainwater pouring into classrooms across two floors, who are vying for money from the same pot as a football pitch.
Mr Sayers said Lisneal was deemed priority one as it was “unsafe”.
Acknowledging the chair’s point, Mr Pengelly said it is fair to highlight that “maybe we need to do more work to better articulate the differential components between priorities one, two and three” and that he will be “commissioning work to see what have we learnt from this”.
Mr Mathison said that when people are custodians of public money, the process needs to be clear — adding that he wants the outworking of any internal review to be brought before the committee.
Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan
Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan suggested it wasn’t an “inescapable health and safety pressure” when a pitch was used for six years after an inspection.
He said money used for the school pitch was “over and above what was required”, emphasising the “enormous demand” within a “tight budget”.
Sinn Fein MLA Cathy Mason mentioned an additional funding award of £1.3m for the school for an extension in this financial year. Mr Pengelly was directly asked if that too came out of the £29.1m minor works budget.
The CEO passed the question to Mr Sayers, who said: “Yes, that is funded from the EA minor works money.”
He then referred to two pots — one for SEN projects and the other for traditional capital projects.
Asked again if it came out of the £29.1m minor works budget, he added: “I think it came out of the SEN budget. We need to get clarity on that.”
Belfast Telegraph has asked the department multiple times whether the award came from the £29.1m budget but it did not directly answer the question.
The EA reps said this £1.3m was to replace classrooms that had been adapted for specialist provision.
Ms Mason spoke of other schools giving up classroom space for SEN and which will be looking for equality of treatment from the EA.
Mr Pengelly defended the funding, saying Lisneal was one of 10 schools chosen to take part in a pilot project, the only one in the west.
Unlike other projects, the Lisneal contract document does not mention specialist provision, while the EA’s own document for a pilot says the school was to get two autism classrooms — not three classrooms and a dance theatre.
Furthermore, in an Assembly question from the DUP’s Gary Middleton, neither the Foyle MLA nor the minister mentioned SEN when talking about plans for three classrooms and a dance theatre.