Review of business case for two schools in April

In reply to questions from Deputy Rob Prow, Policy & Resources president Deputy St Pier said that the committee had seen an outline business case, but the final version is expected in April and would be decided on only after the review had taken place.

A planning application for extending Les Beaucamps and St Sampson's is already in.

P&R has delegated authority to approve the spending of £157.2m. on putting various decisions regarding education into effect, subject to the full business cases.

Deputy St Pier said the committee was expecting to receive this [for the development at Les Beaucamps and St Sampson's] in April and it would then face rigorous scrutiny and challenge to make sure the project was affordable: ‘Until Education, Sport and Culture have presented their homework, it’s difficult for us to mark it,’ he said.

Deputy Prow, one of the three deputies behind a requete seeking to delay work starting until after the election, wanted to know if any outline business case had taken into account concerns raised by douzaines, unions and the public.

But Deputy St Pier said this was presented in November so did not respond to challenges which had emerged only recently.

P&R expected ESC to address these challenges in its final business case.

The P&R president was unable to say whether either the final business case or the outline would be made public, and he said that would be something to be discussed in committee.

An independent project assurance review had been carried out of the outline business case in November , which separated the transformation programme from the build programme and after looking at the build element found that the core design brief was in line with the agreed space standards.

But the design brief submitted to the contractor for pricing included additional space for special educational needs and enhanced sports facilities.

In answer to Deputy Prow’s final question about what precedent there was for a project going out to tender before the plans had been approved, Deputy St Pier said that waste transfer station and the redevelopment of Les Beaucamps High School were two examples of this.