EXCLUSIVE

Almost £350,000 of council taxpayers' money was spent during two school closures - just to remove their photocopiers.

Medway Council bosses were legally bound to pay the sum, which emerged as part of a Messenger probe into the closure of Ridge Meadow Primary School.

The 200-pupil school in Churchill Avenue, Chatham, closed last summer despite protests from staff and pupils.

Now it has emerged it cost almost £90,000, just to cancel its photocopier leases with Glasgow-based office supply firm NCS Limited.

Further leases with NCS costing £255,000 had to be cancelled at Medway Community College, which merged with Chatham South school to become the Bishop of Rochester Academy.

The Messenger uncovered the sum after cabinet papers in July revealed £500,000 "unfunded" costs of closing the two schools and Temple School, Strood, which merged with Chapter to become Strood Academy.

Medway Council could not give a full breakdown of the figure so we used the Freedom of Information Act.

Ridge Meadow was the only primary school to close, thanks to two more being saved after passionate campaigns which included a governor standing on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Cllr Sam Craven (Lab), who was a parent at threatened school St John's in Chatham and joined the campaigns, condemned the figures.

She said: "It's a ridiculous amount. The whole procedure wasn't justified and it was done shoddily because they didn't read the figures properly."

The sum has emerged less than three months after the council admitted a new primary school will have to be built in Medway, because of a predicted rise in pupil numbers.

It also comes after 140 school staff, mostly teaching assistants, were made redundant after cuts this year - 31 of them at just two primaries.

Medway Council bosses say the photocopier bill, which was taken directly out of the schools budget, will be recouped when Ridge Meadow becomes the sixth-form for the nearby Bradfields School for pupils with autism.

The specialist unit will itself cost £1.5 million, but is predicted to save £700,000 a year by reducing pupils' need to travel out of Medway.

A council spokesman said: "The contracts for equipment such as photocopiers were agreed by the governing bodies of the relevant schools based upon their assessment of the needs of the school. When the schools closed the council had no choice but to honour these contracts."