Pimlico School:
PFI = Profits for Investors
A. Teacher
Westminster Council used to be the flagship for Tory Policies. It still is. The Conservatives may no longer in government, but their policies live on, implemented enthusiastically by Labour. Pimlico School is to be the flagship PFI project, pushed through against the opposition of parents, teachers and local residents, by Chair of Governors, Jack Straw.
The Private Finance Initiative is presented as a partnership between the public and private sectors to encourage badly needed investment run down by years of Tory cuts. It is no such thing. PFI is a step on the road to privatisation of education. As a down payment, Straw proposes to give away 23 per cent of the prime SW1 site to property developers to build luxury housing.
The council is allowing its own planning regulations on density to be broken and there is no provision for any social housing. Perish the thought that the developer’s profits or the tone of the area should be affected by allowing any working class people to live there at lower than market prices.
The building work will take about five years. You might think, if you were a parent, that having your children taught on a building site for that length of time could affect their education. But no, the disruption we are assured will be almost nil! The Governors and staff will have no control over the new building and it is open to the developer to use it for any other purpose out of school time.
True to its free-market principles the council and the government went through a long tendering process and eventually narrowed the bidders down to 2, one of which it selected in July as the preferred bidder.
The Governors and staff will have no control over the new building
Again, following market principles it emerged that both final bidders were part owned by the same property developer! They "shared nothing but a bank account" a representative of one of the companies told a member of school staff.
Even more bizarrely it now emerges that the developer rejected in the final stage had a proposal to decant the school to another site while building work went on, but this was turned down by the council in breach of its own specifications for making a bid.
This simply confirms what most staff and parents had already suspected, that this was a rigged auction, driven not by the relative costs to the public, but as pathbreaker for other PFI projects in education.
Because the state can borrow more cheaply, the cost of providing a new school in this way could be higher than one built by the public sector. This fact is disguised in Pimlico by giving the developer public assets worth between £17 and £25 million.
The cost to the public over the long term could be much greater, with the council and the DFE committed to make annual payments to the developer for providing a school for a period of 35 years. Because of the likely profits from the luxury housing, the developer could default on the contract to provide a school (and consequently not receive any money from the council) and still not be at a financial loss.
Teachers and parents who are well aware of the problems of the existing building, partly the result of lack of maintenance and upgrading from a council with almost the lowest council tax in England & Wales, have constantly asked for refurbishment – with lower cost, less disruption and without giving 23% of the site away, but it is clear that the council’s (and the government’s) only option is demolition and rebuilding using PFI.
Both have passed motions of no confidence in the Governors who voted by a narrow majority for PFI. One of the latter, a parent governor, has now resigned and an election is taking place for the vacant place. Given that both candidates are opposed to PFI it is possible that the Governors’ decision could be reversed.
Either way the campaign to save Pimlico School, which involves parents, staff and local residents will continue.