A SCHOOL'S building work went £2.1m over budget because no official project manager was in place, it has been revealed.

Findings of an investigation at Nottingham Bluecoat School and Technology College have now been released to The Post under the Freedom of Information Act.

The school's Aspley campus was developed throughout 2005 and 2006 but delays and design changes sent costs rocketing – leading to the probe in 2007.

The council placed tighter financial controls on schools after the completion of the investigation in 2008.

Taxpayers paid for the mistakes at Bluecoat School at the time as Nottingham City Council approved at least £2.4m in loans to the school to plug the gap.

Results of the probe, by PricewaterhouseCoopers, had previously been blocked by the city council until now.

An investigation from PricewaterhouseCoopers states: "The project appears to have suffered many changes both after the contract was awarded and throughout the construction phase."

The original cost for the new Aspley building was around £9m.

Investigators found that a project manager was not appointed to oversee the project, although there was "clearly a need" for one.

The report states: "The school appears to have had significant involvement in the changes to the design during the build process. The provision of a formal project management function would have lessened impact of this."

Recommendations in the report include reviewing projects prior to tendering, making sure a project manager is appointed and having projects independently reviewed.

A Nottingham City Council spokesman said: "We commissioned the report in order to better understand the reasons for the overspend on the scheme which was the responsibility of the governors of Bluecoat School. The report has helped provide an insight into what went wrong which will help us to avoid such pitfalls if we were to be involved in similar schemes in the future."

Bluecoat is a voluntary aided Church of England school which means the church owns the school and appoints the majority of governors and teachers and 10% of capital projects is raised by the governing body with 90% allocated by the Government.

Chairman of governors at the time, Grenville Gibson, resigned in May 2007. The Post was unable to contact him and current chairperson Ronnie Ogier, said she was unable to comment because the events were prior to her appointment.

michael.greenwell@nottinghameveningpost.co.uk