AN Evening Advertiser campaign calling for fairer funding for Swindon schools may have finally reaped dividends from the Government.
Our campaign, which began more than a year ago, called for the controversial system of funding local government to be scrapped.
Now the Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) has been reviewed and the prospects look good for Swindon.
If the draft proposals by the Government work out well, the town could receive as much as £9.8m more next year, although the final figure is likely to be several million less.
The SSA has for years resulted in Swindon Council receiving low funding for all its services, including the lowest allocation in the country for education.
The Advertiser took the issue to Education Secretary Estelle Morris and even confronted her at a local government conference in Swindon last November.
The campaign, along with lobbying from Swindon and Wiltshire councils, may have had some influence on the Government's review.
Local government minister, Nick Raynsford, is asking councils and other organisations to give their views on the proposals, before finalising them in November.
Because the review proposes numerous options for the new formula, there are actually 1.6 million possible permutations for how Swin-don's settlement could change.
Swindon Council's finance director Ian Thompson has worked out that the best case scenario for the town is that
it could receive an extra £9.8m and the worst case is that it could receive £2.2m less. He believes the actual figure will be somewhere in between the two.
One thing that is certain is that Swindon will next year be entitled to extra bonuses that recognise it is an expensive place to live.
At the moment only Lon-don and the South East are viewed worthy of the area cost adjustment, which meant that towns and cities a few miles east of Swindon receive millions more. That area will now be expanded to include Wiltshire.
Mr Thompson said: "The expectation is that the biggest winners will be the urban areas in the north, but the big bonus for Swindon is that Wiltshire is now deemed to be a high cost area.
"That's a huge win for the town and it would have to be a pretty perverse result from the consultation for Swindon not to get significantly more money from the review."
Andrew Nye, headteacher of Seven Fields Primary School and chairman of the Swindon Association of Prim-ary Headteachers, praised the Advertiser for its efforts on the campaign.
He said: "The Adver has led a good and sustained campaign and has always stuck up for the town and tried to do its best to get a better deal from central government.
"Swindon was never going to jump to the top of the SSA table, but it looks as though the gap will be narrowed between the best and the worst funding, which can only be good news for the town."
Conservative leader Mike Bawden (Old Town and Lawn) said: "It looks as if it is good news, but the moment of truth will come later this year. A lot of people, including the Evening Advertiser and local MPs, have done a lot of lobbying and we are keeping our fingers crossed that it will have paid off."
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