Contacts: John Wilkinson, Assistant County Education Officer, Lifelong Learning, 01962 845084

Bob Eardley, Strategic Planning Manager, 01962 846275

1. Summary

The following decisions are sought:

1. That further opportunities be explored with private providers of early years education on County Council sites with available land and in surplus accommodation in schools, and with the schools concerned.

2. That the management models outlined in paragraph 5.2 of the report be developed and adopted for existing and future provision of early years education on County Council sites.

3. That the County Education Officer in conjunction with the Director of Property, Business and Regulatory Services will assess site specific building proposals by third party providers on their merits, and in line with the policy outlined in this report and the briefing/performance specification.

4. That emergency provision in temporary buildings for third party providers of early years education be made in exceptional circumstances, and subject to specific approval by the Executive Member, Education and Executive Member, Policy and Resources.

5. That funding to meet the cost of providing temporary accommodation for early years provision be made available from the New Deal for Schools Modernisation Fund.

2. Reasons

2.1 To approve policy revisions to the arrangements for providing accommodation and capital funding for early years education and childcare.

3. Other options considered and rejected

3.1 Not applicable.

4. Conflicts of interest declared by the decision maker or member or officer consulted

4.1 Not applicable.

5. Dispensation granted by the Standards Committee

5.1 Not applicable.

6. Reason(s) for the matter being dealt with if urgent

6.2 Not applicable.

Approved by: Date of decision:

Councillor D. Allen

Contacts: John Wilkinson, Assistant County Education Officer, Lifelong Learning, 01962 845084

Bob Eardley, Strategic Planning Manager, 01962 846275

1. Summary

1.1 A report to the former Land Sub-Committee in January 1999 set out the property implications and proposed strategy for dealing with the issues surrounding the provision of early years accommodation.

1.2 This report develops the issues identified in that report, reviews the options for early years provision on County Council sites and proposes a policy and strategy for working with private sector providers, as well as dealing with urgent matters arising with provision on existing sites.

1.3 The Executive Member, Education is being recommended to approve:

6. That further opportunities be explored with private providers of early years education on County Council sites with available land and in surplus accommodation in schools, and with the schools concerned.

7. That the management models outlined in paragraph 5.2 be developed and adopted for existing and future provision of early years education on County Council sites.

8. That the County Education Officer in conjunction with the Director of Property, Business and Regulatory Services will assess site specific building proposals by third party providers on their merits, and in line with the policy outlined in this report and the briefing/performance specification.

9. That emergency provision in temporary buildings for third party providers of early years education be made in exceptional circumstances, and subject to specific approval by the Executive Member, Education and Executive Member, Policy and Resources.

10. That funding to meet the cost of providing temporary accommodation for early years provision be made available from the New Deal for Schools Modernisation Fund.

2. Background

2.1 The County Council's role as direct provider of early years education is relatively small; however, there is a duty on LEAs to ensure good quality provision for all four year olds, which will extend to three year olds by 2004.

2.2 The former Land Sub-Committee decided on 22 January 1999 to:

· develop an Early Years brief of accommodation requirements;

· explore opportunities to use surplus accommodation in existing school buildings;

· develop strategies for adapting or extending existing buildings where accommodation does not exist locally;

· develop strategies by which new (free-standing) premises may be provided, if adaptation/extension is not feasible.

2.3 Areas of need and demand relate to full day care for children aged six months to five years, which normally include some facilities for nursery education, and early years nursery education for children aged three years to four years. Most of this provision is developed through partners in the private sector or voluntary/charitable organisations In a significant number of cases the availability of suitable accommodation is a problem, particularly in areas where providers are unable to generate additional income, e.g. from child-care. In several cases, groups have sought to occupy temporary buildings no longer needed by schools. Although this can provide a satisfactory short-term solution, the County Council can face a substantial financial liability when the units need to be replaced, as the groups concerned have not usually been in a position to fund replacement themselves.

2.4 There is scope for the County Council to expand the role of facilitator in relation to additional provision in areas of need, in partnership with private sector providers. Officers from Property, Business and Regulatory Services (from both Design and Estates Practice), Early Years and Child-Care Unit and the Strategic Planning Unit in Education, have been carrying out a review to consider possible opportunities for sites and acceptable design and build projects. This has involved considering the use of land not suitable for disposal to secure capital receipts. Consideration has been given to priority areas together with the need for potential key worker housing.

2.5 The following paragraphs report on that review, and consider options for early years accommodation provision on County Council sites. The review has also embraced the issues involved in groups using temporary buildings, and has looked at the wider potential for partnerships, including the provision of child-care, together with the need to focus on areas of scarcity of provision.

3. Existing Provision

3.1 Currently, across the county, there are 64 registered providers of pre-school and child-care using maintained school sites and/or premises (see Appendix 1). Of these, there are eight that are using temporary buildings, some of which have been condemned and need to be replaced and some which will be required for mainstream school use in the near future. It is necessary to find a mechanism to re-house these groups otherwise they will have to close down, which would be contrary to the duty to secure provision for these children. Possible solutions to this problem are discussed in sections 7 and 8 below.

4. Future Need

4.1 As part of the review it has been possible:

· to identify future need;

· to explore opportunities to use potential surplus accommodation in existing school buildings;

· to explore opportunities to utilise under-used land at existing school sites in order to develop strategies by which new (free-standing) premises may be provided.

4.2 In summary, there are thirty areas of need which have been identified as priority areas throughout the county. For nine of these areas there is the potential for provision to be met using possible surplus accommodation within existing school buildings. In addition to this, there are seventeen sites where it may be possible to accommodate a "free-standing" building established by the County Council and/or third party providers. This leaves six areas of need that it would be difficult to meet on existing school sites.

4.3 Using existing surplus accommodation within existing school buildings, or releasing land to make provision for early years education and childcare will require discussions and agreement with the schools' headteachers and governing bodies involved, as well as with private sector providers. However, these discussions may well be assisted by the impending Education Act 2002 and its consideration of extended schools.

4.4 Checks and balances will need to be brought into play to safeguard the long-term need for early years education. It is also necessary to ensure that provision is accessible and affordable, of good quality and not knowingly in competition with other local provision. These issues will be addressed in lease and management arrangements.

5. Management Models

5.1 In order to assist discussions with schools about the use of their sites and/or buildings, the review of early years provision has looked at the need to put in place relevant management models.

5.2 In the main these fall into four categories:

· Direct management by the school;

· Direct provider - when a third party provider is delivering the provision and is not in County Council owned property, there is no need for a management arrangement to be made with the County Council;

· Provision delivered by a third party in education premises - there are three main agreements that can be entered into when a third party provider occupies education premises and these are:

i. the third party can operate on an hourly lettings basis, which usually means that it does not have exclusive use of the premises it occupies, nor any real security of use;

ii. the third party can operate under a licence, which gives a greater degree of permanence, but it should also not have exclusive use of the accommodation;

iii. the third party can operate under a formal lease, where exclusive use of the accommodation is given and where the tenant may have repairing obligations in respect of the building.

· Provision delivered by a third party on an education site - this is when it is agreed that a third party will provide the accommodation, at its own cost, on a piece of land on a school site. A lease of that piece of the school site would be drawn up between the County Council and the third party provider.

5.3 It will be necessary to ensure that all existing users of school premises and sites have the appropriate management arrangement in place and that all future agreements follow one or the other of these. They would need to meet the conditions laid down in paragraph 4.4 above.

6. Likely Providers

6.1 Public-Private Partnership is not new to the work in this area, e.g. the County Council design-build project for Childsplay on Hayling Island, a 50-place full day-care centre with an educational nursery is proving to be highly successful. However, there is a growing interest from the private sector both locally and nationally in wishing to invest in full day care, including educational nursery provision. This will be a necessity in developing Neighbourhood Nurseries in Leigh Park in order to draw in additional capital funding. A tendering process has begun for this initiative, with expressions of interest received from about ten private providers.

6.2 A record of childcare businesses willing to invest in new buildings on County Council land is being drawn up and added to regularly, as new approaches are made by interested parties. For them, the profits can be made through providing full day care, for which parents pay or are subsidised, and for which there are significant needs in most parts of Hampshire. Early education is funded by government at a standard rate per session. For the County Council, the benefits are in externally provided capital investment and the provision of much needed childcare and early education places, and the security within the land lease agreements and management arrangements.

7. Suitable Buildings on County Council land

7.1 To ensure that future buildings established on school sites by third party early years and child care providers are of acceptable quality, and to assist possible private partners in assessing capital costs, the review has considered the production of a design brief for purpose-built provision, as well as investigating the market for "off the shelf" designed buildings.

7.2 A design brief is being developed that will cover the following aspects:

· philosophical statement to address the need for provision, how it is planned, who is involved, who will provide, where to provide and the various types of provision, such as full day care through to early years centres. Issues arising from the government's drive for the Foundation Stage in education will also be addressed.

· ownership/funding/management - covering various types of provision and types of partners such as:

_ County Council provided, managed and funded;

_ third party providers in County Council buildings;

_ third party providers in new buildings on County Council land.

All of these will need to address issues about ownership and responsibilities.

· design brief for the various types of provision - setting out details relating to the schedules of accommodation of each type of provision, such as disposition of spaces, relationships between spaces, inside/outside spaces, environmental issues, legislation etc.

· acceptable buildings - will deal with the various types of acceptable buildings when the provision is to be in new construction, on or off school sites, or through adaptations to existing buildings. This section will also set out performance specifications for potential construction works that will establish what is acceptable to the County Council.

7.3 There are a number of companies who can provide "off the shelf" buildings that may or may not be acceptable to the County Council. This means that the range of quality, design and materials used is wide. It has not been possible to recommend any one of these manufacturers as being the appropriate solution. The review has identified the need to judge each proposal and site on an individual basis. Some buildings and sites are of particular sensitivity (e.g. historic buildings in conservation areas or recently constructed schools of a high quality on environmentally sensitive sites). Others may be suitable for a more standard or modular approach. In all cases the County Council would retain the right to establish agreement with the provider for the proposed siting, the location and configuration of external areas (parking and external play) and issues relating to appearance, maintenance and repair of any proposal. A controlling factor will also, in all probability, be one of affordability and cost.

8. Temporary Classrooms

8.1 As detailed in paragraph 3.1 above, there are a number of existing pre-schools occupying temporary buildings on school sites. Whilst in the main the replacement of these can be programmed and funding sought in the future, there are two that have become very urgent, because the buildings have been condemned and emergency repairs have extended their life by a few months. The expedient solution, in order to prevent the closure of these groups, is to replace the buildings with other temporary units to give the pre-schools concerned time to raise the necessary funding to provide a permanent solution. Although it is recognised that this is counter to existing County Council policy to reduce the number of temporary buildings, it is recommended that, as exceptions, these should be replaced with other temporary buildings. The funding implications are set out in section 9 below.

9. Funding issues

9.1 The government has recently introduced a number of funding initiatives aimed at early years provision:

· Neighbourhood Nurseries Initiative

· New Opportunities Fund (NOF)

· Nursery Education in Disadvantage Areas (NEDA)

Each of these involves both capital and revenue funding and the NEDA capital requires matched funding which can deliver any of the following:

· community based and run provision

· LEA provided and run provision

· third party provided and run provision.

9.2 In addition to these sources of funding, the Education Asset Management Plan (AMP) process has identified early years provision as one of the priorities in terms of the suitability aspects of AMP. A report to the Executive Member for Education on 22 March 2002 will include a recommendation that part of the New Deal for Schools Modernisation Fund allocation from the Department of Education and Skills (DfES) will be identified for funding early years provision. It is this funding which will allow the emergency replacement of condemned temporary buildings as well as providing some of the matched funding for meeting the needs identified in section 4 above.

Section 100D - Local Government Act 1972 - Background papers

The following documents disclose facts or matters on which this report, or an important part of it, is based and has been relied upon to a material extent in the preparation of this report.

NB: the list excludes:

1. Published works

2. Documents which disclose exempt or confidential information as defined in the Act.

None.

Appendix 1

Registered providers of nursery education using maintained school premises