Bevan Brittan has acted for Bristol City Council and Partnerships for Schools on a £160 million pathfinder Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.

The scheme reached financial close on 3 July 2006 and is the first of four pathfinder schemes to close.

The first phase of the project will see the rebuilding of several colleges and schools in central Bristol including Brislington Enterprise College, Hartcliffe Engineering Community College, Speedwell Technology College and Whitefield Fishponds Community School.  Work starts immediately and the first of the four schools to be completed under the programme is anticipated to be Speedwell in September 2007.

The BSF programme is being funded through central Government Private Finance Initiative (PFI) credits worth £150.7 million together with £9.5 million of the council’s own funds.  Working with Partnerships for Schools, the central Government body responsible for the BSF programme, Bristol City Council was the first of the four pathfinders to announce its preferred bidder and appointed Skanska in December 2005.

The £30 billion BSF national programme is a new approach to capital investment in school buildings. It aims to help modernise all secondary schools across the country to provide 21^st century facilities over a 10– 5 year period.

Partnerships for Schools have developed a standard procurement model for the BSF programme, involving the creation of a public-private partnership joint venture, the Local Education Partnership, or LEP.  The Bristol LEP will be invested in by Skanska, Partnerships for Schools and the Council.  It will be responsible for the integration of ICT and part of the new facilities and for the redevelopment of the remainder of the Bristol Schools Estate over the next ten years.

David Hunter, who led the Bevan Brittan team advising both PfS and Bristol City Council said: “This is a potentially significant milestone in the delivery of education in the UK and we are delighted to have played a major role in seeing the project through to financial close. A huge amount of work has gone into achieving this close and in ensuring that, where possible, that work may be replicated for the benefit of the BSF programme notionally, so that the advantages of applying a strategic approach to developing the educational estate and giving prominence to the role of ICT in that development can be secured throughout the country”.

Bevan Brittan is currently advising on another pathfinder scheme for the London Borough of Greenwich Council, for the Preferred Bidder on the Newcastle BSF scheme and on six other BSF projects currently in procurement.