NOT a brick has been laid or spade put in the ground but Fife Council are already forecasting a "significant overspend" of £11.1 million for the Dunfermline Learning Campus.

The estimated cost of delivering two replacement high schools for St Columba's and Woodmill, due to be completed in 2024 at Halbeath, has now gone up from £111m to just over £122m.

The money needed for the town square proposals for the gap site in Dunfermline, another plan that's still to be approved, has also gone up while new classrooms for McLean Primary School have been delayed until next year.

Elaine Muir, head of finance at Fife Council, told the policy and co-ordination committee last week: "Current estimates for Dunfermline Learning Campus indicate that there could be a potential overspend of £11.1m due to the impact of construction inflation and the requirement to design the building to net zero standards.

"The project is at an early stage and the design team are considering approaches to manage down the potential overspend within the project."

She said ways of managing the "cost pressures" would be looked at in the full business case for the schools, which should be submitted early next year to the committee.

The council's capital plan 2021-31 set aside £202m for secondary schools in West Fife but that also includes the replacement of Inverkeithing High School, which will be built at the Fleet Grounds in Rosyth at an estimated cost of around £70m, and improvements at Dunfermline High and Queen Anne.

A new Fife College will be part of the 58-acre campus and in October ministers approved the business case, with the Scottish Government agreeing to meet the £100m cost of the college's new facilities.

It's a different funding mechanism for the council, who must pay the upfront costs of building the schools.

Councillors were told that a number of flagship building projects in the 10-year capital investment plan are likely to cost more than anticipated.

There are 19 projects which have a value of £5m or greater and the overall budget is £703.5m with a current projected spend of £718.3m – a £14.8m overspend with most of it attributed to the campus.

Ms Muir said: "There continues to be a risk across the capital investment plan that both the timing and the costs of projects may be adversely affected as a result of the current economic climate following the response to COVID-19 and Brexit.

"Throughout the programme, issues are continuing to be identified in relation to the supply of construction materials which are resulting in delays to projects which, in turn, could lead to increased slippage and increased costs.

"However, the overall impact of this is difficult to predict with any degree of certainty and the forecasts for 2021-22 relate in the main to projects that are currently in progress with contracts that are already agreed."

Her report also said the Dunfermline gap site was a new project to be developed following additional investment approved in the budget in March.

She said: "It has taken a substantial amount of time to get the initial site investigations and professional support and there is £175,000 slippage as a result."

Another project affected is the installation of two temporary classrooms at McLean Primary School, with slippage of £349,000.

The modular buildings were due to be installed this year but that's been pushed back to August 2022 "due to site conditions requiring grouting of mine workings".

The Abbeyview community hub has been delayed, although it's now at the planning stage, while the project to put traffic lights on Pitreavie roundabout, which was delivered more than six months late, actually saved the council £162,000 due to a lower tender price than the design estimate.

And there are minor hold-ups on the plans to put traffic lights on the Bothwell Gardens roundabout.

Ms Muir said all options were being explored to mitigate the cost increases, while all funding options are also being investigated to help pay for all the projects detailed in the programme through to 2031.