2.10 The Department had assumed prior to 2004 that Local Authorities would be able to plan quickly how to rework their school estates based on their existing strategic planning work. But the Department was disappointed that early plans from Local Authorities were not sufficiently ambitious and did not take account of other education policies to widen the use of schools, integrate services or broaden the choice of school types in each area. It decided to give Local Authorities more time to develop high quality plans.
2.11 In its July 2004 modelling, PfS assumed that Local Authorities would take 28 weeks to develop their strategies and get an approved Outline Business Case. So far, it has taken Local Authorities an average of 81 weeks (Figure 11).