CRUMBLING schools in North Yorkshire will need repairs costing £44 million over the next five years, it has been revealed.

The figure is the bill for restoring buildings to a "serviceable state".

It does not cover modernisation or take account of changes to pupil numbers.

A total of £3.9 million of the county council's bill is regarded as "urgent work".

A further £11.2 million will need to be spent within two years and the remaining £28.9 million within five years.

However, the council is spending only 3.27 per cent of its education budget on repairs in the current financial year.

Nationally, ten local authorities are spending more than five per cent of their annual budgets on repairs. Tameside faces the biggest burden, at 15.12 per cent.

The repair bills were revealed in answer to a parliamentary question tabled by Harrogate MP Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat education spokesman.

Bernadette Jones, head of policy and development at North Yorkshire's education department, said: "Like every authority we have backlogs of repairs and maintenance but we are better than most, as Ofsted found two years ago.

"The money allocated to schools through education budgets is only part of the picture.

"There are repairs and maintenance programmes that the Government give us money through and schools receive devolved capital now.

"We devote all monies the Government give us to tackle it.

"They have certainly given us a lot more in the last few years and it has been a government priority and for that we're very grateful."

She said the figure of £44 million over the next five years covered bills for the county's 390 schools, and was based on condition surveys carried out.

"We have a got a lot of maintenance work going on around the county. Much building work has gone on at our schools and we're about to open four new schools in April, two of them in Barlby and Brotherton.

Education minister John Healey said the Government had provided £5.5 billion for school repairs over the last two years - and would spend a further £6.3 billion by 2004.

The total repairs bill for all England's education authorities was estimated at just over £7 billion, he said.

Mr Healey said: "The figures are derived from data supplied by local education authorities over the past two years, based on surveys carried out mainly in 1999 or early 2000."

No figures are available for the repair bill in the City of York. Mr Healey said the council was one of 15 authorities currently reviewing its assessment.

Updated: 11:25 Monday, February 25, 2002