A mess of Gove’s own making

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By Jim Sweetman / @jimbo9848

With the fall of Mubarak hogging the headlines, Michael Gove’s defeat in the High Court last week over the speed at which he abolished the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in July 2010 didn’t get as much coverage as it might have done. It is not often that a judicial review goes against a minister.

The case was brought by six councils which claimed, firstly, that the decision to end the programme was arbitrary and irrational given the investment which had already been made and, secondly, was flawed because of Michael Gove’s failure to properly consult or to treat applications equally. In his ruling, the judge allowed the second point but not the first. Regrettably, although he described what had happened as ‘an abuse of power’ he made no order for compensation so the local authorities concerned were left with their own costs.

That was a shame. The local authorities took up the case because they stood to lose almost £750 million in investment between them. Waltham Forest was facing a £17 million debt for development costs which, if the programme was cancelled, would simply be wasted.

Essentially, what the judgement means is that the secretary of state simply has to issue a further consultation notice at the end of which he still has the right to close the programme in respect of each individual school – fifty-eight of them were named. There is everything to indicate that that is exactly what he will do and his statement last week gave little hope for the councils involved. What it also showed was a cavalier contempt for the judge’s ruling in a smirking statement which acknowledged the criticism but was smarmy in its response. The judge said the consultation should continue with an ‘open mind’ but that did not appear to be the view of the DFE. A chipper schools minister, Lord Hill claimed, in a BBC interview, that the coalition case was simply lost on ‘minor and technical’ issues – so much for abuses of power then.

Much of the case revolved around whether the DFE had broken its promises to the local authority and to parents. There was also a discussion of the way that the closures were announced and of the incompetence of DFE officials in getting the list wrong so many times that Michael Gove was forced to apologise to parliament. However, what it proved was, unsurprisingly, that central government was entitled to claw back its cash and not follow up on its commitments after a general election.

The Building Schools for the Future programme – savaged in the media and by the DFE as wasteful and bureaucratic – has been a great success as well. It has not simply involved prestigious new buildings but also the renovation and modernisation of thousands of other schools. The flagship schools were expensive but they were also architectural explorations of how schools in the future should operate. However, some of the criticism was justified. It was a wasteful programme in some aspects with elaborate and labyrinthine processes for local authorities to get lost in and, as often happens, the centralised procurement created hold-ups and logjams. That was a shame on all counts because if the redevelopment of the school estate had run to time, the electorate would have had much more to see in 2010 at the time of the general election.

Along the way, and as part of his onslaught on the BSF, Michael Gove also managed to slag off the work of Richard Rogers, ridiculing the involvement of world-famous architects in school building to a free school conference. He forgot that the same team of architects designed the Mossbourne Academy which has been regularly applauded by David Cameron for raising standards in London.

It will be interesting to see how the judgement plays with parents in Luton, Nottingham, Waltham Forest, Newham, Sandwell and Kent who have seen promised new schools – some of which were well down the line of development – abandoned, while new ‘free’ schools appear to be free to spend without any democratic control. Kent will be particularly fascinating because it was an unlikely bed partner in this case but stood to lose more investment than many after joining BSF late.

This is not quite the end of the story. There does have to be a new consultation and in each area it is likely to be noisy. It is even possible that some projects will be allowed. It is also worth remembering that these six were the local authorities who complained. The cancellation of the programme nationally has brought strategic school planning and renovation to a grinding halt while free schools and new academies can develop without regard to the need for school places. It is all a mess of Michael Gove’s making and, a few years down the line, it may yet come back to haunt him.