Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to fund new schools in Bromsgrove constituency.

Local authorities are responsible for providing enough school places for children in their area. Where the need for a new school has been identified, local authorities must currently seek proposals for a new academy, or free school, under section 6A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. This is known as the ‘free school presumption’ process.

Changes to the legal framework for opening new schools will be introduced through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. The measures will remove the legal presumption that all new schools are opened as academies, allowing local authorities to welcome proposals for all types of school and to put forward their own proposals where they choose to do so. This will ensure new schools are simply opened by the provider with the best offer for local children and families.

The department provides the Basic Need capital grant to support local authorities to provide mainstream school places, based on their own pupil forecasts and capacity data. We provide High Needs Provision capital allocations to support the provision of new places and improve existing provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities or requiring alternative provision. Local authorities can use this funding to provide places in new schools or through expansions of existing schools.

Financial contributions from housing developers are also an important way of helping to meet demand for new school places when housing developments are driving pupil numbers. It is for the Local Planning Authority (LPA) to secure developer contributions through section 106 agreements or the Community Infrastructure Levy and to decide on the local infrastructure needs that this contribution should support. The department encourages LPAs to secure significant contributions for new school places and work closely with colleagues planning school places in their area, including county councils when the local authority responsible for education is not the LPA.

There are no centrally-delivered free school projects currently planned for the Bromsgrove area.