Schools across a city are caught up in an increasingly bitter row over repairs, with some telling the BBC they’ve had to fight to get work done while paying “astronomical” charges over 25 years. The Stoke-on-Trent schools are all locked into a multi-million-pound Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract, meaning they pay a company to keep their buildings in good condition.
The agreement is due to end in October, when schools fear the private firm will walk away, leaving behind a huge repair bill for work not completed. BBC News has been investigating the row for more than a year, visiting multiple schools in the city, using Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and analysing documents.
We can exclusively reveal 42 of the 88 schools involved are now withholding payments to the contract. The investigation also found: 35 of those schools received a letter from Stoke-on-Trent City Council threatening them with legal action in January; Schools were also told at the end of January that there was not enough money left to complete all the repairs required before the contract ends; None of the 88 schools in the contract have received any compensation for alleged failures, such as delays to repair buildings over the course of the 25-year contract.
The contract was signed in 2000 between Stoke-on-Trent City Council and a firm called Transform Schools (Stoke) Limited (TSSL). It uses multinational company Equans to maintain the facilities. The contract is the largest of its kind in England and will be among the first PFI deals in the country to expire. After the deal ends, the private company will have no further liability.
What happens next has implications for the expiry of almost 600 similar deals covering schools and hospitals across England.
At a School in Stoke, more than half the children are from a deprived area, and the heating system frequently breaks down.
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