Cash-strapped Telford & Wrekin Council must pay out more than £200 million over the next 23 years to contractors who built Hadley Learning Community, it has been revealed.

The council is tied into making £9 million-a-year payments under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) set up with Interserve in 2006, it is claimed.

Tory former finance chief Sean Kelly said the Labour administration, which agreed to the deal, should be held to account, claiming the building work would have only cost in the region of £70 million had the council done it itself.

But council chiefs today claimed Interserve was contracted to do far more than just build the ‘shell’ and actually provided many of the services on the site, including the swimming pool, library and a gym, as well as providing the non-teaching staff.

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