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When the Going Gets Tough - 27/07/2009
The Daily Telegraph recently reported that there will be an overall cut in public spending in 2010/11 of almost £3 billion (0.7%). Within this figure, spending on schools will increase by 0.8%. Spending on innovation, universities and skills will fall by 2.4%. This is equivalent to a reduction of £100 million in spending in the education sector. It seems education spending, controversially, will be cut next year for the first time in two decades!
What does this mean for companies like ours who are heavily involved in the education sector? Times are difficult at the moment and each job we chase is an important one - more now than ever with the current economic climate. Only time will tell what these cuts may mean.
Jobs are still out there though. Recently the Equitix Consortium reached financial close on the £75 million Derbyshire Building Schools for the Future contract. Work is already underway on three schools which are expected to open in Autumn 2010. Partnerships for Schools chief executive Tim Byles commented “Derbyshire County Council can now move forward fully committed to providing outstanding education facilities for the local community.” He added: “Building Schools for the Future has now achieved 13 financial closes in 2009, explicitly demonstrating our goal to transform the lives of school children across the country.”
Thorpe Kilworth took the decision last year to offer our services at bid stage in order to give ourselves a unique selling point (USP) in our market place and help deliver schools, academies and so on that everyone would be proud to be associated with. Coming in at bid stage has proved successful for us and we have been part of winning bid processes, particularly with Balfour Beatty. Plain old fashioned hard work from all parties involved go into winning these bids.
This USP is working well for us but we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball for one second. No-one can if they want to succeed in this tough environment in particularly these tough times.
Neil Logue
(MD)