Education Authority chief defends handling of school pitch funding

The head of the Education Authority has defended its handling of the allocation of more than £700,000 to a school for a sports pitch.

Questions have been asked over the allocation which was made to Lisneal College in Londonderry through the EA’s minor works scheme without a formal application having been made.

MLAs raised concerns about that allocation at a time of tight budgets and when other schools are complaining of issues with their facilities.

It follows the Belfast Telegraph reporting details of a meeting Education Minister Paul Givan and DUP colleagues held with the school in June last year.

EA chief executive Richard Pengelly appeared before the Stormont Education Committee on Wednesday afternoon.

During his evidence session, he addressed what he termed were the “four key issues of concern”, which included the absence of a formal application for the works.

He told MLAs that as a school in the controlled sector for which the EA is the managing authority, Lisneal College did not need to apply for the funding.

“There was no need for an application because we do not require applications for the controlled sector for priority one projects,” he told MLAs.

“We are an asset owner, the Education Authority owns the asset, an application would therefore have been us applying to ourselves.”

He also stood over the position that the pitch was a “major health and safety risk”, saying it had been assessed as that in 2019 by EA staff which was later confirmed by an independent report.

“We made a mistake on January 31 when we said this pitch hadn’t been in use, this was trying to put a statement out on a Friday evening to try and allay some growing public concern about what was happening, we didn’t have the opportunity to do all the checks that we would normally seek to do.

“We got that wrong, we hold our hands up, we’re sorry for that. It shouldn’t have happened.”

In terms of the meeting with the minister, Mr Pengelly outlined the timeline for the project starting in 2019, and described a “normal timeline for a project of this magnitude”.

He added: “Unfortunately they take three to four years. This started with the school indicating there was a problem and our inspection process kicking in.”

Committee chairman Nick Mathison asked the EA officials present if they are satisfied that priority one projects are being “appropriately designated as genuinely priority one”.

Roger Sayers, assistant director for infrastructure and capital development, said: “We are content”, describing “multiple gateways into checking what is a priority one project that we must do”, in terms of health and safety and the Disability Discrimination Act.

“The pitch was deemed priority one because it was unsafe,” he added.

He said the pitch was built in 2007 and had reached the end of its useful life, with rips and tears reported as well as a number of injuries occurring including “quite a serious leg break”.

Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan put to the officials that if the pitch was still being used, it was not an inescapable health and safety pressure, and asked whether they accepted that.

Mr Pengelly responded: “I don’t, for the reason that every time a roof needs (to be) replaced, for every time a school needs a new traffic management system, we don’t on that day close the school, but that remains an inescapable pressure … we put in place at a local level a risk assessment and local mitigating factors, but that’s make do and mend until we do the job that we need to do.”

“The reason we don’t prioritise a pitch vs a heating system or a set of windows in these circumstances is because if they’ve both entered the priority one bucket, they both get done.”

Earlier this month there were fractious exchanges as Mr Givan appeared before the committee for two hours.

Asked to confirm if he had brought any influence to bear on the prioritisation of the Lisneal application, Mr Givan said: “I didn’t bring any influence to bear and the Education Authority confirmed that over the weekend, that there was no influence brought to bear on their decision-making process as a result of my engagement on this particular project.”

Asked whether he was content there was sufficient scrutiny of the project approved under the scheme, Mr Givan responded saying he did not have any concerns.

Mr Sheehan put to the minister the issue is “beginning to smack of cronyism”, to which Mr Givan responded: “It’s not.” He pointed out he has visited nearly 150 schools from all sectors, as well as saying there are several members of Mr Sheehan’s party, Sinn Fein, on the board of the EA.