19th August 2010

We are fortunate that in our area there have been a number of large public sector building projects which have been approved in recent years, some of which have now been completed – including the new Oaklands School in Yeovil.

 

We also have a new hospital being built at South Petherton, on which good progress is being made.

And there have been some other important capital projects, including the demolition of temporary classrooms and their replacement with permanent structures at schools such as Avishayes in Chard, and at Birchfield, Westfield Secondary and Preston Primary in Yeovil.

In general, the last 10 years saw a big increase in money for “capital spending” on new buildings and on other infrastructure.

Unfortunately, this spending is now having to be cut back dramatically. This is not something which has been driven by the new Coalition Government, it is in fact an announcement made by the last Labour Government before it left office this year.

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling quietly announced a 50% cut in capital spending from 2011 onwards – without specifying in which areas the axe would fall. But cutting capital spending by a half is pretty much the same as cutting out all of the “extra” projects that could be delivered. This leaves the “unavoidable” capital spending on projects that are already half-completed or on basic road and rail maintenance that has to be undertaken.

So when the Coalition Government announced the freezing of the “Building Schools for the Future” programme that planned to rebuild or “remodel” every secondary school in England, all Ministers were doing were making the formal announcement of cuts which Labour had anticipated 6 months before, but had not had the honesty to actually announce.

 

Of course, the Coalition could have sort to reverse the cuts in the capital budgets, but frankly with a deficit of £150 billion, and the Government borrowing an extra £3bn per week, that just would not have been sensible housekeeping.

Many schools will, of course, be deeply disappointed that they have lost out on the new investment which was expected. And many schools do need rebuilding or redesigning – including some of the schools in our area.

Of course, it is the quality of the teaching which is more important than the quality of the buildings, but our children and teachers do deserve high quality facilities, and these send out a very positive and strong signal about the importance we place on education and the high aspirations which we have.

The Government’s deficit reduction plan focuses on getting borrowing under control between now and 2014/2015. If the Government can deliver this successful outcome, then it should be planning to rebuild the budgets for capital spending beyond 2015. This includes for schools, colleges, hospitals and transport infrastructure.

We need a proper budget for school capital spending, and one that focuses the resources we have on where the real need is located. We also need continued investment in NHS facilities, so we can do elsewhere what we are presently doing for the hospital in South Petherton (whose predecessor hospital actually pre-dated the founding of the National Health Service!)

And, of course, we need extra money for our transport network. We should be completely dualling rail lines such as the Salisbury-Exeter line, and re-opening stations such as Chard Junction. And we should be tackling congestion on our road network – the delays, for example, on the A303 around Stonehenge are a national disgrace, as is the fact that we have failed to move the main road here away from a site of such huge importance, in spite of the issue having been debated and discussed for decades.

We also need funding for a proper high-speed rail network, and that certainly won’t be cheap.

The dire state of the public finances fully justifies putting the brakes on now, but once the budget is back in balance we need to get capital spending going again – this is a key investment in the nation’s future, and we must not go back to the days when this investment always took second place to “current” spending on immediate priorities. We must plan and invest in the years to come.

 

Ever,

David.