Government spent �264m on site costs alone for 33 free schools in London, Land Registry records disclose

London land prices have been sky high, though the NAO says the DfE has paid higher than market valuation for free school sites

The government spent more than a quarter of a billion pounds on acquiring land and buildings for 33 free schools in London, Education Uncovered can disclose.

This website looked up information from Land Registry records and found previously-unpublished details on the 33 projects, whose cost to the taxpayer has yet to be disclosed in the government’s rarely-updated official free schools capital costs database.

The total figure of £264m for these 33 projects – which works out at £8m alone per school, among those in the capital we looked up - is more than three times the amount previously disclosed by the government in relation to individual mainstream free schools projects.

Our new list of costs to the taxpayer of individual free school site acquisitions has nine schools on it whose premises – excluding any construction or refurbishment expenditure - cost more to purchase than the highest one released so far on the government’s database.