The repairs backlog at Bradford schools will cost a staggering £93 million to fix, a new report reveals.

The situation was today condemned as a “scandal” by Councillor Andy Thornton, chairman of the Council’s Young People and Education Improvement Committee.

The damning report, prepared for his committee which has a watchdog role, follows an audit of work needed at primary, secondary and special schools.

Necessary engineering work is estimated to cost about £30 million; repairs to internal walls and doors comes to nearly £26 million; external walls, windows and doors will cost more than £12 million and “sanitary services” more than £7.3 million.

The district’s £400 million Building Schools for the Future programme, which will see work to replace or refurbish all 28 secondary schools completed or started by September 2011, is expected to remove about half the backlog.

But the report adds that “the funding required to make improvements to the overall school estate has been considerably increased both through Council and Government initiatives”.

Despite this, the total available for repairs during the 2009/10 academic year has been calculated at £7.5 million. The majority of this is expected to be spent on primary schools.

The report also highlights Westminster CE Primary School, in Westminster Road, Bradford, due to a lack of adequate heating in its nursery and Stocks Lane Primary in Clayton Heights, Bradford, which had a leaking roof.

Coun Thornton said: “It’s a scandal that this situation was ever allowed to develop.”

A Council spokesman said it was awaiting a response from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to its bid for funding from the national Primary Capital Programme.

“Funding of £23.9 million will be secured from April 2009 if the strategy is accepted. This funding will enable the Council to make significant inroads into the repair and maintenance issues,” she said. "The Council continues to monitor the situation through its regular surveys of all school buildings, meetings with schools and it prioritises need as a consequence.”

She said priorities were work needed to school roofs, windows and mechanical services and added the work required at Westminster Primary would be “resolved at the earliest possible date”.

Councillor Ralph Berry, the Labour group’s education spokesman, said problems in some schools had not been properly addressed in 1999 when they moved from a three-tier to two-tier system.

In 2006, the Telegraph & Argus reported that of the 132 schools involved in the scheme, staff at 50 were still unhappy with the work carried out.

Coun Berry said: “People have been concentrating on BSF and I think the capacity of the Council to assess and plan for schools has not been as good as it could have been.”

Coun Thornton also argued that work carried out during the schools’ re-organisation programme was not all satisfactory.

He said: “I’m pleased that the Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme will make a big difference by replacing and refurbishing secondary schools. Likewise the Primary Capital Programme will begin to address the primary estate.

“Executive must ensure that these new projects are properly resourced and managed. That was not the case with the re-organisation builds. As a result many defects have only recently been addressed and a major issue at one school is still not resolved.

“Going forward, the committee wants to see evidence that the Council has a sound plan for the future of its school estate.”

Councillor David Ward, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said part of the problem lay in the fact that the district was still using Victorian school buildings which had left Council finances “stretched”.

Roosje Barr, the Council’s assistant director, facilities management, said: “The Government has acknowledged that the funding it has been providing to local authorities across the country, including Bradford, has been insufficient to cover the costs of outstanding repairs to school buildings."