Published: Friday, 5th September, 2008 12:30pm

Peeblesshire News saves Borders schools £200,000

A WEST LINTON mum has emerged as the saviour of Borders schools - and she works for the Peeblesshire News.

Laura Robertson, who sits on the village"s parent council, quizzed why her local primary had to pay rates.

Following investigations by the council"s education department it emerged that they didn"t - with almost £200,000 being returned to the schools budget.

And future savings of tens-of-thousands every year are forecast because of the editorial assistant"s query.

The 40ish editorial assistant told the Peeblesshire News: 'It seemed a bit strange that one council department was charging another council department - especially when schools are struggling to find savings.'

Schools across the entire Borders were hit earlier this year with an average of 2 per-cent cuts from their budgets - resulting in redundancies and other drastic savings.

But the money pulled back from rates over-payments has taken some of the sting out of the impact, with top-up cash injections being made to headteachers.

Councillor Catriona Bhatia heaped praise on Laura and the other members of West Linton Primary"s parent council.

She told us: 'I took the matters raised at our meeting with the parent council and it turned out a lot of rural schools were sort of exempt from paying rates. This hadn"t been picked up before and the education department was able to reclaim a lot of money.

'As well as this year"s backdating money this will also give the department future savings that it hadn"t anticipated.'

Education bean counters managed to recoup a total of £192,000 from the finance department.

Michael Pryer, chairman of West Linton Primary School Parent Council, said: 'Laura certainly should take credit for her suggestion.

'Finding savings from the school budget has been challenging and we were looking at all the options when the suggestion was made.

'Much of our school budget, like other small schools, is committed to teaching staff and it is difficult for us to identify other areas for savings.'