COUNCIL chiefs have defended the decision to award a multi-million pound school project to the company that ran over budget on two major contracts in Darlington in the past two years.

Darlington Borough Council announced last week that Balfour Beatty is to build the £15.3m Eastbourne CoE Academy - the town's first academy school, which is due to open in 2009.

But the company owns Birse Civils - the engineering firm behind the controversial Pedestrian Heart and Eastern Transport Corridor projects. Both schemes went over budget by millions of pounds.

"We don't want another big project to go over budget," said Heather Scott, the leader of the Conservative opposition party at the council.

"I hope the people who appointed Balfour Beatty are aware of the problems we have had with Birse over the Pedestrian Heart and the Eastern Transport Corridor.

"Hopefully, the people who wrote up the contract for the academy will have better project management in place - that is where the council fell down on the other two projects.

"We need to make sure we have the expertise in place to oversee the contract this time."

The council was criticised last year when it emerged that the cost of the town centre pedestrianisation scheme led by Birse had rocketed from the original estimate of £6.5m to £9.167m.

Birse hit the headlines again last month when it was announced that there had been a £1.5m overspend on the Eastern Transport Corridor link road project.

A spokeswoman for Balfour Beatty said: "The fact is that the Pedestrian Heart and Eastern Transport Corridor projects were by Birse Civils and it is a separate operating company.

"We have been through the proper process of pre-qualification and tender and I'm sure we have been picked because we are the right people for the job.

"We are looking forward to completing the academy project in a satisfactory manner and on time."

A council spokeswoman said: "Birse is a division of Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering, which is one of six Government-approved contractors for building academies. Two of these contractors put in a bid for the work in Darlington.

"We have a strict tender process and all the correct procedures were followed in appointing Balfour Beatty."