Council Prepares To Bail Out Half Of Brighton & Hove Schools

Half of the schools in Brighton and Hove have budgets in the red and the council may have to bail them out, councillors have been warned.

A report said that 33 out of the 61 council-maintained schools had a licensed deficit – coinciding with the rising number of schools with spare places.

Brighton and Hove City Council’s chief financial officer Nigel Manvell spelt out the picture to the council’s Strategy, Finance and City Regeneration Committee yesterday (Thursday 7 December).

The government provides a “dedicate schools grant” – totalling £198 million this year – and the council distributes the money to schools.

But if schools overspend by too much, the council would have to provide funding to enable them to balance their books.

The “licensed deficits” in the current financial year totalled £4.39 million, councillors were told, just less than the £4.54 million surplus at the end of 2022-23, the most recent full financial year.

The Labour deputy leader of the council Jacob Taylor asked whether a potential £573,000 overspend – beyond the surplus – would have to come out the council’s budget.

Councillor Taylor also asked if the funding shortfall was linked to fewer children going to school in Brighton and Hove, with funding based on pupil numbers. He said:

“Is this normal? Is this how councils normally operate?

“Is this how Brighton has historically operated in that most of our schools are in deficit and we have to … bail out schools?”

Mr Manvell said that the budgets were a “close call” this year and the council worked to help schools to achieve a balanced financial position.

If too many schools were in the red, then the council would have to pay towards balancing their budgets.

He said that it was “highly unusual” to have more than half the schools in deficit, adding:

“I don’t know the position nationally.

“I do know there are many authorities that do have schools with licensed deficits. Whether there are any reaching this extent, I’m not clear.

“I would imagine it would be a similar situation in authorities that are experiencing falling pupil numbers and falling roll numbers.

“And that certainly is what is causing the issues in Brighton and Hove, alongside below-inflation uplifts of the dedicated schools grant over a number of years.”

The council is currently carrying out public consultations into the proposed closure of two primary schools and proposed cuts in admission numbers at nine other schools because of hundreds of empty places.

There are 2,610 primary school places in reception each year at the moment but the council forecast that just 1,959 children would require a school place in 2025 and 1,948 in 2026.

Next Thursday (December 14), councillors are due to debate petitions objecting to the proposed closure of two undersubscribed primary schools – St Bartholomew’s, in Brighton, and St Peter’s, in Portslade.

Parents at Goldstone Primary School, in Hove, and St Luke’s, in Brighton, are also campaigning against cuts to their intakes by 30 reception pupils from 2025.

Consultations are open on the council’s website and include proposals to cut admission numbers at Brunswick, Queen’s Park, Rudyard Kipling, Saltdean and Woodingdean primary schools and Patcham and Stanford infant schools from September 2025.