Council ‘must be open’ about wider impact of £60m school blunder

Andrew Burns, deputy chairman of the Accounts Commission, said the council had to address the culture that led to the failures.

He said: “To help ensure they fulfil their scrutiny and decision-making responsibilities, councillors must have access to, and take up, appropriate training and development.

“This is vital to ensure historic failures of leadership and governance at the council are not repeated.”

He told BBC Scotland News that the community in Bishopton and the council were “confident that the monies can be found” to provide the required school places.

“It is an historic error which the current council, to their credit, are rectifying, but they need to be absolutely clear about the financial and service impacts of finding that gap because £60m, by anybody’s terms, is quite a substantial sum of money,” he said.

“We absolutely recognise as a commission that the council has made good progress, they have been engaging with the local community and we’re just really urging them now to make sure that progress is sustained over the medium to longer term and that the community can be as assured as possible about where the £60m is going to come from.”

The council will have to submit a best value report outlining their progress and medium-term financial plan to the commission by December, he added.

A council spokesperson noted the comments from the commission and said the additional costs had already been “factored into our planned borrowing to fund our long-term capital investments”.

The spokesperson added: “The future impacts of these additional costs are being considered through the wider financial planning continually taking place to ensure the council remains financially stable over the coming years.”