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Dept for Education and Skills

Answer

Helen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate he has made of the capital costs of merging children's services; and what provision he has made in his departmental budget for such costs. [179244] Margaret Hodge: No overall estimate of the capital costs of merging children's services has been made. A capital budget of £317.8 million is available to develop children's centres in the 20 per cent. most disadvantaged areas by March 2006. These centres will offer child care integrated with early education, health family and parenting support, Local authorities are developing them from a wide variety of existing provision such as Sure Start local programmes, early excellence centres, schools and health centres which also benefit from other sources of capital investment. £12.6 million was made available in 2003-04 and £23.8 million has been made available in 2004-05 to support the development of extended schools for schools to provide a range of children and family services on their premises. Up to 10 per cent. of this funding can be used for minor capital works schools need to undertake in order to house services. As part of Building Schools for the Future, we want to facilitate better joined-up planning and funding for extended schools and the co-location of services on school sites. Building Schools for the Future (BSF) will invest approximately £2.2 billion in secondary schools in 2005-06, and will contribute to the integrated children's services agenda by creating schools that are accessible to the wider community and which have flexible, multi-use areas that can be used by other services. In addition to BSF, the Government are allocating around £2.9 billion to schools and LEAs for investment in school buildings in 2005-06. LEAs and schools decide locally how to invest the bulk of this funding, and can invest it in extended schools facilities, community of use of facilities and integrating education and other local authority services and needs, where these are prioritised locally in asset management plans.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

179244; 423 c461W

Session

2003-04

Subjects

Costs Capital investment Finance Schools Youth services Children's centres

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk