FEARS were growing last night over the future of multimillion-pound plans for a long-awaited new secondary school in Moray.
One councillor said pupils and staff had been “left in limbo” by a fresh delay to the Elgin High project and parents are due to hold urgent talks on the issue tonight.
Construction of the new academy – originally announced in 2012 – had been due to start in March.
But it was stalled amid concerns about the escalating price tag – which now sits at £28.2million.
The local authority agreed yesterday to commit £1.545million towards the Scottish Futures Trust-funded project.
But because of new European accounting legislation – known as ESA10 – the Holyrood government is having to change its funding model for delivering major capital schemes.
And that process could take until the end of this year to complete.
Moray Council’s corporate director of education and social care, Laurence Findlay, said yesterday: “Obviously, by now, we had hoped to be much further along with this project.
“It was hoped there would be a resolution to the ESA10 in the next six-to-eight weeks, but now that might be more like six months, so we are still no further forward really on that one.
“I should also point out that all the costs here are at today’s prices, and there is an issue with further delays giving inflationary costs.”
The local authority’s head of lifelong learning, culture and sport, Graham Jarvis said there was “no way” Elgin High would be completed by March 31, 2017 if work did not commence before September this year.
Council leader Stewart Cree and chief executive Roddy Burns have already discussed the delay with Deputy First Minister John Swinney.
Mr Cree said: “I’m getting more and more anxious. Now I feel it threatens the project because we seem to be being prepared gradually for extensive delay of some nature.
“The quicker the Scottish Government let us know exactly what we should do then the better.
“If we go on and they tell us it’s going to be six months, nine months, a year, whatever – I’ll believe anything now because it started off as a little local difficulty.”
Fochabers Lhanbryde councillor Douglas Ross added: “Out of all this we have pupils, parents staff who are in absolute limbo.
“There was great celebrations around the news that this school was going to be replaced, and I think it’s of serious concern to us as elected members but also to the wider community that these delays keep on happening.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The Scottish Government remains committed to assisting Moray Council with improving its school estate through the Schools for the Future Programme.
“The new Elgin High School project forms part of this and is scheduled to reach financial close this summer.
“European rules that govern our wider non-profit distributing programme have changed. As a result we are working through a number of complex issues in discussion with the Office for National Statistics and HM Treasury.
“We fully expect to resolve these issues but there has been some impact on a small number of projects in the interim.
“We are doing our upmost to ensure that delay is kept to a minimum and projects can move to financial close as soon as possible.”
A spokeswoman for Elgin High School’s parent council said last night that parents would meeting to discuss the delay this evening.
The new school will be able to accommodate 800 pupils.
The existing building, which opened in 1978, will be demolished when the new building is in place.
The new campus will include a separate sports block, a floodlit synthetic all-weather sports pitch and an athletics track.