A £4m maintenance backlog on school buildings that Swindon Council is responsible for has prompted calls for more Government funds.

Official figures show there is £4.13m worth of outstanding maintenance work across the council’s 77 maintained schools. Maintained schools are funded by central government via the local authority, but do not include certain schools, such as free schools or academies.

The backlog includes more than £1.25m worth of urgent maintenance work that should be carried out within the next year.

In 2011/12, the Govern-ment dramatically cut its devolved formula capital funding for Swindon’s schools from £3.13m per year to just £610,000 per year.

This has meant that primary schools have had their average devolved capital funding cut from £32,800 per year in 2010/11 to just £6,940 per year from 2011/12, and in secondary schools the cut has gone from £109,000 to £22,800.

Coun Cindy Matthews, Swindon Labour group’s education lead, said the cuts in capital funding to schools were either leading to essential maintenance works not being done, or schools having to use funding allocated for teaching and learning for building maintenance works.

She said: “I am concerned that there is £4m worth of outstanding maintenance, particularly when schools have had their capital maintenance budgets dramatically cut.

“I can’t see this leading to anything other than many children being schooled in sub-standard buildings or some schools having to use their funding earmarked for teaching and learning to repair their buildings. “I would like the Govern-ment to invest more money in school building maintenance costs.”

Coun David Renard, the council leader, said the Conservative group inherited a maintenance liability on Swindon schools of about £50m from the last Labour council, so £4m was a significant improvement. But added that the Govern-ment was trying to deal with the national budget deficit, so there was less money.

He said: “Clearly if there are urgent works in the top priority that need to be done in the year, then I would expect them to be done in year.

“There’s always going to be a certain amount of backlog on maintenance and there’s a system for prioritising that. And if there are health and safety issues, the money has been found immediately for those.”

Dick Denyer, a former governor of Gorse Hill Infant School, said money had always been forthcoming for the Gorse Hill schools but he knew of others that were struggling.

He said the council and Government seemed to have a more pressing agenda than school buildings and education when it came to spending money.

He said: “There’s a lot of money wasted that could have been spent on schools and there’s a lot of money wasted within schools that could have been spent.”

He gave the examples of new desks removed from some schools because people wanted to change the colour, and a school that remodelled its reception area twice in a few months.