Humza Yousaf pushed on £75m Dargavel Primary blunder

The First Minister's warning came as he was pushed on the Dargavel Primary scandal in parliament on Thursday.

We revealed in November that the brand new £18m school building should have been able to accommodate 1,100 pupils, but due to an “error” by officials, the new building can only hold 430 kids. 

Last week, in a paper sent to councillors, education chiefs at cash-strapped Renfrewshire Council admitted that the cost of fixing the problem would be far more than previously thought. 

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The authority announced in February that they now expect 1,500 children to need to use the school by 2033 and that would require a new building with capacity for around 800 pupils. 

According to the papers, the cost of the new building will be somewhere between £42m and £45m, while extending the local secondary, Park Mains High School, to accommodate another 400 pupils will be between £27m and £30m. 

Neil Bibby, the Labour MSP for West Scotland, raised the plight of the school during First Minister’s Questions and called on the Scottish Government to help the council foot the bill. 

“Renfrewshire's Education Policy Board meets today to discuss school provision for children in Dargavel, following the council's catastrophic school miscalculation,” he said. 

“The last time I raised the expected cost to fix the mess was £28 million. It is now an incredible £75 million. 

“Parents are looking for the Scottish Government to help resolve this situation. 

“Does the First Minister agree that no child in Renfrewshire should have to pay for the council's incompetence and lose out because of the resulting shortfall in school budgets?

“And if so, what will the Scottish Government do to ensure there's accountability for this failure and that the appropriate primary and secondary provision is in place as a matter of urgency?”

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Mr Yousaf said education secretary Jenny Gilruth would have discussions with Renfrewshire Council, but that, ultimately, these were “local authority matters.” 

“What Neil Bibby is asking me to do is take money out of the current school building programme and redistribute that to another project," he said.

“Now he would have to say what school we would take that away from because every single penny is accounted for in terms of the current budget. 

“So yes, we will continue to have discussions with Renfrewshire Council as we have done already, but I will ask the education secretary to re-touch base with Renfrewshire Council because ultimately, I agree with Neil Bibby's premise that no child should feel that their education or their educational attainment suffers as a result of any decision that's made, be that by national government or indeed by local government.”

In the paper sent to councillors, the local authority said they would likely need to take a loan out to pay for the cost. They estimated that this “prudential borrowing” would leave the council with an annual bill of £4m.

Dargavel Primary is part of the privately funded Dargavel Village project, a multimillion-pound development to build 4,000 new homes on the site of a former Royal Ordnance Factory by 2034.

As part of the agreement with the council, BAE systems paid for the new school.

However, because they have built it to the specifications supplied to them by the council their obligations under what is known as the Section 75 agreement, are now discharged, leaving the authority to pick up the cost.

In the latest board paper for the council’s education committee, officers admit that they have not yet secured land, and that no design had been finalised, and that no commercial tender has been issued for construction.