£80,000 gas bill for shut-down school after heating left on

THE trustees of a mothballed school have been saddled with an £80,000 gas bill after the building's full heating system was left on for 18 months after it closed, despite only a skeleton staff remaining there.

More than 100 staff were made redundant 18 months ago when Oakbank residential school in Aberdeen was closed because of financial problems.

But it was revealed that the main heating boiler at the school had been left running while the skeleton staff was still working in the empty building.

And a leaked e-mail suggested that the money had "literally been burnt" since the closure.

Scottish and Southern Energy wrote to trustees earlier this month, warning them that SSE planned to apply for a warrant to disconnect the gas supply because of an unpaid gas bill of 81,512.

The trustees are understood to have questioned the size of the bill they faced.

But the board's lawyer, David McLeod, stated in a letter to the trustees: "The only explanation he (the SSE representative) could think of is that it is an old boiler which runs the heating system and the heating system has been kept running for the entire building throughout the period since the school closed.

"If this is correct, then this debt represents a very substantial sum which has literally been burnt."

Last night, however, Conservative Councillor Alan Donnelly, who is the vice-chairman of the school's board of trustees, rejected suggestions that the money had been squandered. He insisted that the bulk of the unpaid gas bill related to historic debts accumulated when the school was running into financial difficulties.

He said: "This bill goes back more than two years to non-payment in 2006/07 when the school was struggling to make ends meet and before we decided to cut our losses and close the school.

"But we kept a skeleton staff there to archive all the records of the kids who went through the school. We also had a member of staff dealing with financial matters so we couldn't have switched off the heating completely.

"We also had security there because we were very concerned that the building could have been vandalised or that someone might have squatted in the place.

"But, in hindsight, perhaps we should have switched some of those heaters off."

Councillor Willie Young, another trustee who is secretary of the Labour group on the council, said: "We have done everything to make sure that all costs relating to Oakbank have been contained and we are perfectly happy with how we have run Oakbank over the last two years."

The school has now been sold to developer Carlton Rock for 7 million.