Portacabins will be installed at Park Mains High School within the next year as council bosses are accused of short-changing taxpayers again.
Renfrewshire Council has confirmed five Portacabins will be installed at Park Mains during the 2023/24 academic year.
It is estimated the cost will be in excess of £1 million.
The news comes after it was revealed that developers at Dargavel Village have committed to funding only 200 additional spaces at the Erskine school.
But the local authority’s catastrophic error with projected pupil numbers at Dargavel Primary – where 548 places were created instead of 1,100 – means hundreds more will likely be needed.
The gap means the council could be forced to pay for half the expansion at the school, as well as the costs of the new Portacabins.
Alan Kelly, chairman of Dargavel Primary School parent council, said the mistake with pupil numbers has far-reaching consequences.
He said: “Like the rest of the parent council, I want to move forward and work constructively with Renfrewshire Council, but these revelations of additional mistakes are making it harder and harder.
“All those additional children identified at Dargavel are going to go to Park Mains so the numbers have got to be wrong there too.
“The reality is that the Section 75 agreement signed by the council says the developer will contribute to the secondary education provision of 200 additional children.
“If there are 450 to 500 additional children identified at Dargavel, we know that doesn’t match up.”
Mr Kelly added: “Renfrewshire Council could have asked for whatever it needed and the developers said yes to building a new primary school and contributing to Park Mains. They said, ‘tell us how many children need to be accommodated’ but Renfrewshire Council got their numbers so badly wrong.
“That means Renfrewshire Council has short-changed children and taxpayers, who will ultimately need to pay for those additional spaces – just like they are for the additional spaces needed at Dargavel.”
Neil Bibby MSP, who has raised the issue of Dargavel Primary at Holyrood, said council officials needed to get a handle on the crisis urgently.
“The incompetence at Renfrewshire Council which has let down the Dargavel community is now having a knock-on impact on the rest of the area,” the West Scotland MSP said.
“Now pupils in Park Mains High School will be forced into Portacabins and the whole of Renfrewshire looks like it will have to pick up the tab for this mess.
“It is a scandalous waste of money and the bill is now set to get even higher.
“People are rightly angry at this fiasco – an independent inquiry needs to establish how this was allowed to happen and a proper plan to fix this, which delivers a first-class education for pupils in Renfrewshire and value for money for the taxpayer.”
A spokesman for the local authority said negotiations around a financial settlement for Park Mains were ongoing – but admitted a previous agreement committed developers to contributing to the educational provision of “up to 200 additional children”.
He said: “Planning for an extension has formed part of our school estate management planning for several years, with its costs being factored into future budgets.
“It was agreed in the updated Section 75 agreement in 2018 that the developer would engage with the council on an assessment of the impact on secondary school provision and a resultant secondary school financial contribution once they reached a certain point of house building and this process is now underway.
“Future pupil roll for Park Mains is being assessed to determine how many pupils will require a secondary school place and at what stage. At this point, the size of extension and contribution will be finalised.”
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