A college set up to train engineers to work on Britain’s controversial HS2 high-speed railway line is at risk of administration following a series of management failures, including a legal attempt to gag an official education inspector’s report, the government was warned on Monday.
The National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure — formerly the National College of High Speed Rail — was opened by then transport minister Justine Greening in September 2017 with two state of the art campuses in Birmingham and Doncaster.
But the state-funded project has been troubled since its inception and on Monday a report for the Department for Education warned that “radical change is urgently required” and that without emergency funding it would run out of cash.
The need for a further bailout comes after the government injected an additional £4.55m into the college last year to allow its 2017/18 accounts to be signed off.
“Without a commitment of 12 months of continued emergency funding the board will not be able to sign off on their 2018/19 financial statements as a going concern,” the report found, adding that the board has already received insolvency advice from the law firm Eversheds.
The report by the Further Education Commissioner (FEC) also condemned a decision by the college’s board to spend public funds on lawyers to try to block the release of a highly critical Ofsted report, which incurred “significant” costs. As the college is receiving emergency funding, this is “clearly a very difficult and sensitive issue”, it said. The college subsequently dropped the legal action.
The Ofsted report, which was also published on Monday, gave the college an “inadequate” rating, while an earlier report report by the Education and Skills Funding Agency had given it “notice to improve”
The college’s troubles will come as a set back to the government, which wants to invest in science and technical training for youngsters who do not go to university. High-quality training was to play an important role in prime minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to “level up” disadvantaged northern areas such as Doncaster.
Earlier this month Mr Johnson gave the go-ahead for the building of the first phase of HS2 between London and Birmingham, despite the total cost of the project, which is eventually meant to link the capital to Manchester and Leeds, rising to £106bn.
The FEC’s report said the funding crisis was in part to blame on a shortfall of students owing to the uncertainty surrounding HS2. As of December, the college had 216 apprentices and 94 other full-time students — even though the 2019/20 budget was based on 761 apprentices and 263 full-time learners.
But the commissioner also pointed to a number of leadership failures including a 12 person senior management team, which sapped 72 per cent of the college’s income — “an exceptionally high overhead cost to carry”.
Just 16 of the 66 staff were teachers but even the “actual hours” teachers spent in front of students was a “very low” proportion of their time, the report found.
The FEC also criticised the college’s 10-strong board, which is chaired by Alison Munro, a former chief executive of HS2, which was “reluctant to reduce costs” and had “no credible plan” to resolve the issues.
In a statement, the college said it was working to “ensure a long-term sustainable future for our provision”. It added that it considered “the Ofsted process and provisional grade to be flawed” and that many of the challenges it faced came “from factors outside of our control”.
Other board members who also worked at HS2 include Claire Mowbray, chief executive of the college, who received £190,000 in 2016/17 including a performance bonus according to the last set of accounts available ending July 2018. She had joined HS2 in 2014 to “advise on its development”.
