MENSTON councillor Chris Greaves has challenged the chairman of Bradford Council's education committee to explain a 'mystery' behind the City's 'missing' £164m school repairs bill.

But in response, the chairman said 'the Tories were never very good at sums' and that the reported figures are accurate.

Conservatives are pointing to figures published this week by the Local Education Authority in which local schools have asked the Government for a total of £36m in order to meet the backlog of classroom repairs.

This compares with a claimed repairs bill three years ago of £200m.

In October 1995, the council's then education chairman, Coun John Ryan, launched a high profile education underfunding campaign.

This involved lobbying Conservative Government Ministers to cough up extra cash to improve Bradford's schools.

Now Coun Greaves, a Conservative education committee member, is demanding that Labour Party bosses at City Hall explain how the district's school repairs bill has apparently decreased by a total of £164m in just 40 months.

Coun Greaves (Con, Rombalds Ward), who is Conservative Group spokesman on education resources, said: "Labour's sums just don't add up. Three years ago, under a Conservative Government, we were told that local schools needed a minimum of £200m to spend on repairing crumbling buildings.

"Now, under a new Labour Government, we are being asked to believe that the repairs bill has fallen miraculously to around £36m.

"It is a classic example of a Labour-run council willing to massage the figures to suit their own purposes.

"It is proof that previous campaigns launched by Labour councillors were based on false and misleading information."

He added: "The Chairman of the Educational Committee should now admit that his predecessor got his sums wrong."

But Councillor Jim Flood, Chairman of Bradford Council's Education Committee said: "The Tories were never very good at sums.

"If you take out a number of crumbling schools through re-organisation, and then do just the weatherproofing repairs on the rest, you get the figure in the report.

"But Coun Greaves is right to remind us of the sheer scale of the previous Government's neglect of our schools."

A Bradford Council Education spokesman said that the £10m the council was currently bidding for under the New Deals for School Scheme was a realistic sum to tackle the most urgent major repairs, including water and weatherproofing, based on a priority list of schools.

He said: "The Government's commitment to put schools first has already been reflected in the £2.8m secured by the council for vital improvements to a number of school buildings since the New Deal for Schools initiative was launched in 1997.

"The £200m bill was for a combination of work, including about £40m for urgent repairs and the rest for the replacement of temporary school buildings, other development work and building new schools."

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