Southampton City Council is battling a multi-million-pound funding shortfall to carry out urgent school repair projects.
A recent council meeting was told decisions are having to be made on which major schemes are given priority in the face of a growing backlog of serious building issues.
Labour cabinet member for children and learning Cllr Alex Winning said: “We have got schools that are just not fit for purpose.
“Children having to learn in conditions that just aren’t good enough and we are really on the back foot.
“We are not alone and I think it is going to be a really tough road ahead to catch up because you are just fighting backlogs all the time.”
Tina Dyer-Slade, director of corporate estate and assets, told the children and families scrutiny panel meeting on Thursday, June 5,there was a significant funding shortfall for maintenance work.
The most recent review identified a backlog in the region of £9million for the city’s schools, the panel heard.
The council received an annual school condition allocation of £2.8million from the Department for Education to assist with maintenance and improvement of buildings and facilities.
Ms Dyer-Slade said there was not enough funding to cover all of the most critical problems – classified as D1 cases.
These issues are described as being life expired, exhibiting major deterioration, serious risk of imminent failure or a health and safety risk.
Any issues in this classification are labelled as needing urgent priority to prevent the closure of the premises, address high health and safety risk to occupants or remedy a serious breach of legislation.
Ms Dyer-Slade said: “What is in place at the moment is a reactive programme and it is not only reactive dealing with the D1s, but it is dealing with the most vital from the D1s so it can’t cover all the D1s.”
John Pawsey, service manager for construction project delivery, added: “The aspiration would be hopefully in the future to have more of a planned long-term maintenance approach on a five or ten year basis but as we know the budgets just aren’t there at the moment for that.”
Cllr Winning said nationally around 40 per cent of schools needed some form of urgent capital work.
He told panel members most cities were facing this issue, but acknowledged the council needed to do a better job at communicating with schools.
Officers said a pilot workshop with a handful of headteachers was taking place this month with the aim of increasing schools’ awareness of their obligations, helping them to understand the local authority’s role and outline the support that is available.