Questions over £6m land deal at controversial Bradford free school

The National Union of Teachers has raised the issue in a letter to Meg Hillier MP, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee and Neil Carmichael MP the chairman of the education select committee.

Details of the land deal first emerged in a Department for Education investigation report into the Bradford free school three years ago.

Exclusive: MPs told to mount probe into Bradford school fraud scandal

The DfE agreed to pay £296,000-a-year over a 20-year lease to the Hartley Group, the company of senior Conservative businessman Alan Lewis.

At the time the deal was agreed Mr Lewis was vice-chairman of the Conservative Party nationally and the DfE also believed he was the school’s chairman of governors.

It subsequently said that Mr Lewis was not the chairman of governors and in fact the Kings Science Academy had no chairman of governors for its first year in operation. The free school opened in temporary accommodation in Manningham, in 2011, and moved to its new home on land owned by Hartley Group, in Lidget Green, Bradford in 2012.

Now the way in which the Kings Science Academy land deal was arrived at is being questioned by the NUT.

In a letter to the chairs of both the Public Accounts Committee and the Education Select Committee the union general secretary Kevin Courtney said figures from Bradford Council showed when it bought land through a compulsory purchase order for a secondary school at around the same time it cost the authority just over £350,000.

He adds: “ But the DfE agreed a deal to rent land for a school in the same city in the same year which will ultimately cost taxpayers £6m.

“This money will be paid to a company owned by an individual whom the DfE believed to be the chair of governors at the school and who at the time was the vice chairman of the Conservative Party.”

He urged the chairs of both committees “to look further into this matter to ensure that taxpayers’ money has been spent judiciously.”

Hartley Group has declined to comment on the NUT letter.

Questions over the land deal have been raised before.

Former Bradford East David Ward MP called for Ministers to provide evidence that “the near £300,000 per year rent is not far in excess of what Mr Lewis could reasonably have expected to get from the partially tenanted and largely derelict site.”

Mr Ward also submitted a written question asking whether the department had considered buying the site rather than leasing it. A written answer from minister Edward Timpson at the time said an assessment concluded that a long term lease “represented better value for money” than purchasing the site.”

The DfE has previously said: “We are paying rent on the Kings Science Academy site because that was the best site available in terms of its cost, suitability, size and location. Independent commercial advice was obtained on the cost of the lease for the Kings Science Academy site. This confirmed the cost was in line with the market value.”

The DfE also previously said Kings was paying £2.27 per sq ft in rent to Mr Lewis. It said this was below the rate of £2.77 to £2.88 per square foot paid by the previous tenants.