Bradford schools will be forced to hand back up to £7 million of unspent cash under tough new powers being imposed by Council bosses.

A report has revealed that 180 schools across the district are expecting to have £11m sitting in their accounts at the end of the financial year. However, councillors were told at a scrutiny meeting yesterday that £7m of that would be clawed back by Bradford Council.

From April the authority will order secondary schools with surpluses of more than five per cent of their budget and primary schools with surpluses of more than eight per cent to hand back cash unless they can provide "robust" plans on how it will be spent.

At last night's meeting of Bradford Council's Young People and Education Improvement Committee, the authority's interim finance director Sue Mawson said that of the £10.9m predicted surplus for 2005-06 the Council could expect to claw back £7m.

There are 180 schools in the district expecting to finish the financial year with surplus cash totalling £10.9 million while 27 are expecting to have combined debts of £6.43 million, according to a report presented to the committee.

However, the report also warned that schools were "cautious" at predicting surplus cash. Last year Bradford schools estimated that level of surplus cash would fall by £5.9 million when in fact it rose by £400,000.

Councillor Malcolm Sykes (Con, Clayton and Fairweather Green) said: "In this report it says schools are poor at forecasting their results, it then says they are cautious. What I want to know is when are they going to be accurate?"

Coun Sykes also whether Education Bradford, the private firm which runs the districts education services, would be judged on the number of schools which came out of debt or by how much it reduced the overall debt.

The company, operated by Serco, will receive bonus payments from Bradford Council if it reduces the numbers of schools with deficits greater than two per cent of budget and primary schools with surpluses greater than eight per cent and secondary schools with surpluses greater than five per cent of budgets. The school with the largest forecast debt in the district is Bradford Cathedral Community College, in East Bowling, which estimated it would be more than £1 million in debt by the end of this financial year.

l Plans to build a new secondary school and special school at the site of Grange Technology College in Haycliffe Lane, Bradford, were approved by the Council's Regulatory and Appeals Committee.