8th May 2009
By Neil Merrick
A cash-strapped government quango is poised to pay private consultants more than £400,000 to rescue part of its beleaguered college rebuilding programme.
The Learning and Skills Council, which is due to be abolished in less than 12 months, will employ both PricewaterhouseCoopers and property consultants Lambert Smith Hampton after the Treasury promised an extra £300m per year for schemes put on hold by further education colleges.
The LSC’s national council is due to meet on June 3 to decide how to allocate funds among 144 colleges that were left in limbo when the Building Colleges for the Future programme was suspended in December.
PricewaterhouseCoopers will help the LSC to develop a scoring framework to assess the merits of each project, while Lambert Smith Hampton will identify which colleges are in a position to get building work under way quickly. Total fees are expected to be about £350,000 plus VAT.
David Hughes, LSC national projects director, said the firms would allow the council to maintain objectivity and meet a challenging timetable. ‘To take advantage of these new funds, which are available this year and next, we need to identify projects that can quickly go ahead,’ he said.
But David Collins, president of the Association of Colleges, said the LSC seemed to be paying consultants ‘an awful lot of money’. He urged it to take more time rather than ‘rushing things through’ in six to eight weeks. ‘Whether it’s getting value for money is difficult to determine,’ he added.
The LSC estimates that it can support capital schemes worth up to £750m, including some borrowing by colleges. But the backlog stands at £5.7bn and Treasury funding after 2011/12 still depends on the next Comprehensive Spending Review.
