£1.75m to be spent on securing our schools

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Senior councillors are set to agree £1.75 million of funding to improve school security and safeguarding schemes this year.

The money will cover a range of solutions that include fencing, CCTV, lighting, gates or car park access.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet this week, councillors will receive a report that recommends agreeing the capital funding that would allow the work to take in 2025/2026.

This is the preferred option of four business cases that were presented to the council’s capital oversight board on this issue in April.

Amongst other options that they considered was a proposal to provide £2.1 million over a two-year period and have a further £350,000 on hand to deal with “emerging works” needed beyond March 31, 2027.

The decision is needed as the council endeavours to respond to another scathing inspection report into its education department by Estyn.

One of the watchdog recommendations is to “ensure that the local authority addresses urgently important school site security issues”.

The report said: “To address school site security and safeguarding issues, there a number of projects which are ongoing, or which are planned over the following two financial years 2025/26 and 2026/27.

“There are 29 capital improvement projects and five minor works for site safeguarding across school sites.”

The report explains that routine school maintenance work is funded through the council’s schools’ major improvement programme. This has an annual allocation of £2.5 million up to April 2028.

The report states: “This allocation is already oversubscribed, with many schemes in progress so it is not possible to fund these works from this allocation.”

The council has “estimated” that it could receive £400,000 in grants from the Welsh Government – which leaves £1.35 million for the council to find.

They intend doing this by using £295,000 from the allocation of £350,000 agreed in this year’s budget in February to go to the major improvements programme with the remaining £55,000 to pay for borrowing £1 million to fund the work.

The borrowing would be paid back over a 35-year period.

At a special council meeting back in April to outline the council’s response to the damning Estyn inspection, council leader Cllr Jake Berriman (Liberal Democrat) in his previous cabinet role told councillors that £1.6 million would be needed to fund this work.

The report explains that the difference between his announcement of £1.6 million and the £1.75 million is that £100,000 would be used as a “contingency” and held back to pay for unforeseen or new work that crops up.

If the council doesn’t receive £400,000 in grant funding, they will need to find it from somewhere else.

Director of Corporate Services and s151 Officer, Jane Thomas, said: “The site security work is a priority for the council.

“By re-prioritising and utilising existing funding streams, we ensure that this work can be accommodated without adding additional financial pressure to the council’s budget for 2025-26.

“On this basis, the recommendation can be supported.”