BOSSES at a Darlington school have defended themselves against criticism over a decision to sever an arrangement with the local council.

An e-mail that has been leaked to all councillors in the town shows that Darlington Borough Council officials were disappointed with Eastbourne Comprehensive School's decision to stop having maintenance work done by the education authority.

The school, which is part of a pioneering education federation with its Hurworth counterpart, gave notice of its intention to end the agreement earlier this year after deciding it could get the work done cheaper elsewhere.

Federation officials insist that the move was simply a budget decision aimed at getting maximum value for money, but it does not appear to have gone down well with the council.

The e-mail from council community services director Cliff Brown, to councillor and Eastbourne governor Chris McEwan, says he is very disappointed. It says the school was "let off" a payment of £25,000 to £30,000 owed to the council for gas charges, and he would have made Eastbourne pay the sum had he known the decision was coming.

Mr Brown continues: "I don't believe the school have had any proper regard to the work we do for them from the (Eastbourne) sports complex, that they do not get charged for, but will in future."

He also says that in 2002 his staff deferred holidays and worked excessive hours to carry out emergency work at the school.

"This is clearly irrelevant to the school, who appear to be looking at a particular budget line without any knowledge of all this," he says.

He also lists a variety of council work that has benefited the school.

Mr Brown says he has not given consideration as to how the development will affect the school's budget in respect of the Eastbourne Sports Complex.

"When the complex opened it had, and still has, a deficit on its running costs that the school and ourselves had to cover," he says.

"This clearly gave the head a problem as the school were supposed to look after the building in the daytime and ourselves outside school hours.

"What we agreed with the head at the time was that as part of the partnership working, we would manage the facility and try and minimise the losses by making it available to the public in the daytime, getting income in while programming in school requirements.

"This has been quite effective, but the school would, under normal circumstances, have been expected to contribute to the £124,000 per annum deficit."

But federation chief executive Eamonn Farrar said: "We had a long-standing service level agreement with the local education authority to provide maintenance and buildings work and that worked fine. They have done great work with us. We took a simple budget decision to have, at reduced cost, a more limited service that is under our direct control."

The council has two members of facilities management staff at Eastbourne, also covering other schools in the town.

Mr Farrar said: "It is more usual for a school to have its own member of staff as site manager. It is no secret that the school had financial difficulties, but we have just come out of those and we are in surplus now. We need to stay that way."

Coun McEwan said: "I'm a governor at Eastbourne School and, as a governor, I'm trying to understand a management decision."

A council spokeswoman said the e-mail was "dialogue between two people within the council on corporate business".