BY any standards, it was an extraordinary meeting. The leaders of the three political groups on City of York Council united against their own officials, accusing them of lying and financial incompetence. The sheer force of the attack will have shaken education department officers already reeling from a damning internal report into the Canon Lee School overspend.
It found that staff overstepped their authority, lost financial control, and failed to report the true position.
The result: a £400,000 overspend, money that York education authority - one of the poorest funded in the country - could ill afford to lose.
Councillors' anger is fully justified. They have wrestled for months with the figures, striving to find the money to pay for frontline services. To then discover that officers have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds behind their backs is infuriating.
Nevertheless, this report must be considered in the context of the education authority's overall record.
When City of York Council became a unitary authority, it took responsibility for education from the county council. This was a major undertaking.
The new education authority's excellent record for providing quality schooling was recognised earlier this month when it was one of only three across the country to be given Beacon Status.
The education authority is also pushing forward two major reorganisations, to introduce school catchment areas and to cut surplus places. It was the latter programme that led to the closure of Queen Anne School and the expansion of Canon Lee.
It looked as though the education authority was coping admirably with this workload. But staff who are adept at running good schools may not have the skills to oversee a major capital project. These deficiencies have now been painfully exposed.
It is crucial that the council learns from the Canon Lee experience. All council officials who oversee projects of this scale must be given appropriate training and supervision to ensure these mistakes are never repeated.
Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, February 27, 2001
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