The public private partnerships investor Catalyst Lend Lease and Building Schools for the Future Investments (BSFI) and Birmingham City Council have achieved 'Financial Close' on the framework agreement and to kick start the first £180 million phase of the city's BSF programme.

Catalyst Lend Lease and its construction partner Bovis Lend Lease will work with16 leading architectural practices to deliver the complex programme requirements which are spread over six phases, completing in 2024. Facilities manager Vita Lend Lease will maintain the completed schools on 25-year contracts to ensure that standards of service and maintenance are consistently high throughout the life of the partnership and beyond.

Information Communication Technology (ICT) will play a key part in enabling the transformation of education and supporting collaboration between learning communities. This will be delivered as part of a sustainable 10-year contract which will create a 21st century learning environment, supplied and maintained by Catalyst's long-term ICT partner, Redstone.

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Construction of the first schools has already started at Broadway, Stockland Green Technology College and on the co-located Holte Secondary School, Mayfield Special Needs School and Lozells Primary School sites. All of these are due to open in March 2011. Design development is well underway on 14 more schools which will open in 2012.

Tim Byles, Chief Executive of Partnerships for Schools, the organisation responsible for delivering the BSF programme nationally said: "I am delighted that Birmingham has reached Financial Close as it is a major milestone in the city's BSF project which will see not only pupils and students benefitting from new school buildings but local communities as a whole."

To reduce carbon emissions and operating costs the schools will be equipped with wood chip burning biomass boilers and solar panels. Wind turbines will be installed and rainwater from the roofs of the schools will be collected in storage tanks to supplement mains supplies used to flush lavatories. These sustainable solutions will also feature in the school's educational curriculum.

Thirty local companies are already in line for contracts on the first schools and Bovis Lend Lease is keen to recruit other businesses based in the West Midlands to the BSF supply chain.

(CD/BMcC)