5. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on capital expenditure on schools in the next financial year? OAQ52238

Diolch yn fawr, Llyr. The capital available for schools next year will be £133 million and match funded by our partners. The twenty-first century schools programme operates a series of investment waves over financial years, with the first wave providing £1.4 billion and the second wave of the twenty-first century schools programme starting in 2019 providing a further £2.3 billion.

Councillors have contacted me, and they're concerned that the councils are only given a month to prepare bids for the capital grant this year, which comes out of the underspend of the previous year, and that those bids have to be on the basis that there is an assurance that they will spend the funding in the current financial year. Now, we've been discussing a shortage of public funding, so it's crucial that we make the best of every penny available. So—I'm sure you share my frustration that this is the situation—what will you do to ensure that councils don't have to scrabble together some plans in order to shift the funds?

Well, clearly, we always want to give local authorities as much notice as is possible for moneys that are available. Sometimes, with the best will in the world, additional resources may become available and in the desire—as I said I wanted to do earlier—to get as much money as possible to the front line, sometimes, we do need a quick decision and a quick submission of bids to allow money to be spent in-year that we hadn't anticipated would become available. I'm not prepared to let perfect be the enemy of the good, and in this case I want the good to be more money to the front line.

Cabinet Secretary, the Welsh Government has put a tremendous amount of capital into the twenty-first century schools programme. You have seen in my constituency Awel y Môr and Ysgol Bae Baglan, which are two brand-new schools operating and three new schools due to be operating in September, Ysgol Cwm Brombil, Ysgol Gymraeg Bro Dur and the new Briton Ferry primary. However, there is an issue on maintenance aspects of some of the schools. Very often, we see that many schools, which are not being proposed for new replacements, are in very difficult times because they are being told that they need £3 million-worth of maintenance done to them. For example, Cymer Afan is one of those that they claim is needing that. What are you doing to assess the cost of the maintenance of the schools so that we can not only get the brand-new schools but also keep the schools that are not to be replaced up to standard?

Thank you very much for that question. There are two things that we're doing. We have made available at the end of the last financial year £14 million to schools across Wales to help cover some small-scale maintenance costs. That's money that became available that we were able to get out to schools as quickly as we could. What's also important to note is that, as local authorities put their bids together for band B of the twenty-first century schools programme—as I said, a programme that will see over £2 billion being invested in our school and college premises—one of the new mechanisms for distributing that money actually does allow for a maintenance contract to be a part of the bid, thus covering maintenance costs for some twenty-plus years after the school is built, and many local authorities are looking at that mechanism for addressing the very point that you talk about. 

Cabinet Secretary, the auditor general looked at twenty-first century schools in the report issued May last year, I seem to remember, and in that, whilst he was broadly supportive of the project and thought money had largely been well spent, he did recommend that some adjustments be made if the funding or approach changed for the next band of investment.

Band B is less focused on reducing surplus places and more on improving the condition of the actual school estate itself, and also increasing community engagement. Can you tell us—? Often, these schools are not just schools, but they're fantastic buildings at the heart of communities. Can you tell us what advice you're giving to local education authorities so that they really are at the heart of the community, and the community locally benefits as much from those buildings as possible and gets value for money?

Thank you, Nick. You raise a very important point. We are investing significant amounts of public money in the creation of these new facilities, and they can't just be facilities that are used during the school day, during the school term—we need to make sure that those facilities are available for the community at large.

Only this morning, I had the pleasure and privilege of opening the new eastern campus in the constituency of the Cabinet Secretary for health. It is a truly, truly impressive building that combines 11 to 16 facilities, but also Cardiff and Vale College facilities on the same campus, and fantastic outdoor playing facilities—a floodlit 3G pitch—and those facilities are going to be available, not just for the use of the schoolchildren, but actually the use of the community at large. And I know that that kind of investment in eastern Cardiff, as I heard this morning, is long overdue and is much, much welcomed.