In parliament

The Secretary of State for Education and Science, Mr Anthony Crosland, made a statement in the Commons on the building cost limits for higher and further education. He said that a joint study by the UGC and the Education Department of accommodation standards for higher and further education, which had already resulted in the fixing of a common cost limit for residential accommodation, had been carried a stage further by the establishment of a common cost limit for non‐specialist accommodation such as lecture rooms and seminar rooms and the adoption of a common approach to other building matters. Those changes would be incorporated in a general revision of the cost limits to take account of the rise in building costs since the various dates on which limits were last determined. The new cost limits would apply from 1 April 1967 and details were being sent to the universities, the local education authorities and the voluntary colleges of education. Programmes of building starts for 1987–68 and subsequent years would be revised accordingly. For the universities the new programme values would be £35·1 million (formerly £30 million) in 1967–68 and £29 million (£25 million) in each of the two years 1988–70. For further education and teacher training the revised figures for 1987–68 would be £30·5 million (£27 million) and £8·5 million (£7 million), respectively; the value of programmes for those sectors for subsequent years was still under consideration.