Primary school places: Councils issue shortage warning

  

Two in five council areas in England will not have enough primary school places for the number of children by September 2016, say council leaders.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said pressure from a rising population was reaching a "tipping point".
Time was running out to avert a "national crisis" over a lack of places, it warned.
A Conservative spokesman said the government had created over 440,000 places and must "stick to the course".
The rising number of pupils needing primary places has seen many schools having to expand and add extra classes, particularly in London and some of England's major cities including Manchester and Bristol.

 

'Run out of space'

The LGA said schools were "reaching their limits and could soon run out of space and money for extra places".
It warned that whoever formed the next government after the general election would have to tackle an escalating shortage of places.
"Britain is in the grips of a baby boom. We'll have the biggest population in Europe by the end of the century and clearly that's having a lot of pressure on school places," said David Simmonds, the chairman of the LGA's children and young people board.
The local authorities' organisation said that, over the next decade, there would need to be places for an extra 880,000 pupils at a cost of £12bn.
Mr Simmonds told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "For all the extra children coming through the system we are in a situation now where we are looking at buying land, building completely news schools and that is clearly going to be expensive and the biggest challenge that the new government will have in its education in-tray."
He said recruiting more teachers had not been a problem so far but that in some areas it was "becoming more difficult".