Q21 Geraldine Smith: The whole procedure you go through does seem awfully complex just for basically building new schools and refurbishing schools and to set up this whole organisation, building schools for the future and Partnerships for Schools. £52 million over six years. It seems an awful lot of money and £11 million of that on consultants. What does the Department of Education do? Why can you not run the projects?
Mr Bell: I speak as somebody with a local authority background as well. To start off with, you might think we used to build a school here and there and that is the difference. This is not just about building a school here and there. This is a major project at a local authority level and at a national level. One of the virtues of this has been that it has allowed local authorities to plan the places that they require and then have the buildings put in. Often in the past it was very piecemeal. I think you do need a more complicated but not an overly complicated structure to run this. You do need a national authority to set the objectives. We have found benefits in having a national organisation like Partnerships for Schools to drive the delivery. Partly for the reasons that we have discussed already, it would be a bit odd asking 150 local authorities to learn all of this 150 times over. One of the virtues of Partnerships for Schools-and we have seen this more and more-is that they are able to bring what they learn in one local area into another. Also, I think we get the benefits of the local dimension. Each local plan is precisely that. It is set up locally and the contract that is offered is set up locally. I think we have a system that meets the requirements of a very complicated programme whilst allowing still a large amount of local ownership.
Q22 Geraldine Smith: How many people work for Partnerships for Schools?
Mr Byles: 115.
Q23 Geraldine Smith: An average salary of £85,000. How much are you paid as chief executive?1
Mr Byles: Just over £200,000. As the Report says, having this setup means that we can attract specialist staff who would have been difficult to retain within the department.
Q24 Geraldine Smith: Not necessarily because you use a lot of consultants. You have spent over 11 million on consultants. 20% of your total expenditure was on consultants, was it not?
Mr Byles: In the setup phase there was use of consultants. That has reduced very significantly since that time.
Q25 Geraldine Smith: Why did you use them if you are all specialists being paid large sums of money?
Mr Byles: I cannot answer for before I was in this role in 2006 but there is a need to assemble a range of skills from the private sector as well as the public sector to set up the programme and help it run. Our consultancy bill has gone down very substantially year on year since that time. As the Report itself says, having a central body has helped to achieve a high standard of programme management and having a single body accountable for delivery improves the chances of success. The Report also says that having that approach has enabled effective control over the overall scope, flow and cost of the programme in a way that could not have been done by individual authorities.
Q26 Geraldine Smith: You believe that it was better to set up a separate organisation?
Mr Bell: Yes. I suppose in the Whitehall jargon we are a small policy department. We are not a big department like the Department for Work and Pensions or Defence, where they have direct responsibility for the day to day oversight of delivery. Our view was consistent with the way we structured the rest of our delivery functions. This was brand new. This was about trying to combine private and public funding. Hence the involvement of Partnerships UK. It was also about trying to attract specialists to come to work on a particular project, that from our point of view as a department, it would not have made sense to employ. We could have grown the department by that 115 that Mr Byles currently manages. Our view was that on balance it was better to have a single, focused organisation that would lead this work nationally.
Q27 Geraldine Smith: You think it is fine that Partnerships for Schools employees are paid almost double what the employees are paid who work for building schools for the future in the department?2
Mr Bell: The reality is that Partnerships for Schools-
Q28 Geraldine Smith: Have you looked at that? Is that an issue that concerns you at all? It seems a big difference.
Mr Bell: What would concern me is if we were not getting people who had the requisite skills to make the right contribution to Partnerships for Schools.
Q29 Geraldine Smith: You sound like a defence for bankers.
Mr Bell: If you are going to employ people with the right kind of technical and buildings related skills to lead this kind of programme, there is a market price and that price is higher than what it would be to pay for civil servants. To that extent, if you want Partnerships for Schools to lead nationally a big programme like this, you have to have the right skills. You have to pay for them.
Q30 Geraldine Smith: You must have had some financial problems with the credit crunch. Is it true that you have approached local government pension schemes for finance?
Mr Byles: No, it is not. We have been in discussion with a number of pension fund advisers in the private sector, Norwich Union for example, well publicised as investors in PFI. We have been in discussion with pension fund advisers who also advise the public sector but it is not true, although it has been reported as such, that we have spoken to any individual local authority's pension fund. That would not be the right thing to do.
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1 Ev 11
2 Ev 11