So are they Queen Elizabeth’s fools? (From Bournemouth Echo)

So are they Queen Elizabeth’s fools?

7:00am Friday 14th November 2008 in Search By Timothy John

MEMBERS of Parliament have waded into the debate over the soaring costs of a new Wimborne school.

Dorset County Council will now invest nearly five times the sum earmarked for Queen Elizabeth’s School, taking its contribution to the total budget from about £4 million to nearly £20 million.

At a meeting yesterday councillors gave the thumbs-up to an overall cost of £50.6 million for the groundbreaking design, with £31 million coming from the government.

Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, said that she had recently been assured that the project was on track.

She added: “While an overspend has been suspected for some time, at no point was an increase of such astronomical proportions mentioned.

“It is time that the council releases all the details of this fiasco and explains to the people of Dorset how it will find this additional £15 million.”

But North Dorset MP Bob Walter, in whose constituency the school stands, said his understanding of the situation was that the council had based its original estimate on government figures.

“The most important thing is that we are going to get a spanking new school out of this.

“I understand that to patch up QE School in its present state will cost the county council about £20 million anyway.

“It’s absolutely right that we find out how it was that the government provided the spurious figures on which the original costs were calculated,” said Mr Walter.

Cabinet bosses insist that the extra £15 million it has been forced to stump up will have no immediate impact and be managed through delays to other projects in the council’s building programme.

But councillors batting for other schools have reacted with anger to news that planned improvements elsewhere may now be pushed back.

Cllr Betty Fox-Hodges said children at The Grange School in Christchurch had already waited years for improvements to its ageing buildings.

“The new school at Wimborne may be state of the art, but our school is state of the ark. I want to know how much longer children at my school will have to wait as a result of the waste of all this money.”

Christchurch councillor Peter Hall, said: “Twynham School was promised a new playing field but how far down the line that will go now, we don’t know.

“The playing field is already under water and we’re only two weeks into the new term. We have to make sure all schools are fairly treated, they are not at the moment.”

But the council’s leader Cllr Angus Campbell told councillors: “This is a ground breaking design. We would not have got funding from the government otherwise. Value for money for the children of Dorset is exemplified here.”