Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking with Bromley Council to provide additional school places in the north-west of the borough.

The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places sits with local authorities. The department provides capital funding through the Basic Need grant to support local authorities to provide school places, based on their own pupil forecasts and school capacity data. Local authorities can use this funding to provide places in new schools or through expansions of existing schools and can work with any school in their local area, including academies and free schools. Bromley has received just over £80 million to support the provision of new school places needed between 2011 and 2022. Bromley has not been allocated funding in subsequent allocations because its data indicates need for mainstream places up to September 2026 had already been funded in previous years.