Government Climbdown on School Budgets Welcomed in Romsey
Cllr Caroline Nokes has welcomed a sudden Government U-turn on plans to "claw back" funds from schools across the area.
Yesterday's announcement came after school heads and opposition MPs had objected to the plan which would have seen ministers able to impose a backdated levy on school budgets.
Caroline said:"This claw back would have seen some of Romsey's schools hit very hard indeed, and was raised with me and Michael Gove MP when we visited Halterworth School recently.
"The Government was concerned that some schools had "excessive" surpluses in their budgets, but in fact many of them had been accrued to pay for long term projects, such as renewing libraries. They were the result of prudent financial planning by schools, not hoarding of cash!"
Conservative Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb has warned that this is only a partial climbdown and commented that the Government's plans still left open the possibility of raiding money from school's budgets in the future, which might encourage schools into hasty end of year spending.
In the Romsey area the majority of primary and secondary schools have some surpluses in their budgets, which would have been taken back under the levy which was announced in June this year, when the Minister announced that 5% of all unspent schools’ budgets would be seized , every year for the next three years between 2008 and 2011.
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