Lewisham’s private finance initiative (PFI) schools continues to cause anguish for concerned parents.

Local parent Susan Rowe blamed the system for the loss of facilities for young people, saying decision makers should be “in prison”.

PFI schools are paid for and managed by private companies, but involve extra costs and soak up more than 10 per cent of a school’s budget, according to council documents. 

They often have regulations against use of the space for extra-curricular activities. Several schools in the borough are PFI schools. 

At a Parent Engage education hustings, Susan Rowe said: “You have to provide schools youth facility centres. This public/private partnership thing, I don’t know who signed up to it or agreed to it, but you need to go to prison.

“At the end of the day, if you honestly in good faith knew you were going to build a school that could hold no facilities after school to help children for personal growth and development then somebody needs to be held accountable.

“Instead, you now shut the shopping centres. You have to warn shops and you have to warn other people in the area that you are going to have hoards of kids just running around with nothing to do.”

People Before Profit mayoral candidate John Hamilton agreed the PFI scheme was a “disgrace”.

“I suspect in PFI builds there are regulations for what the schools can be used for and not, and Lewisham went down this road, as did many boroughs – it’s not just Lewisham,” he said.

“PFI is a disaster and a disgrace and it’s not  the right way to build long term projects because it costs a lot, and you are over a barrel by PFI contractors.”

Green Party mayoral candidate John Coughlin said funding would be needed at a national level to improve facilities.

“We can’t actually do anything at a local level. It is very difficult,” he said.

Democrats and Veterans mayoral candidate Will Donnelly said the loss of extra curricular opportunities for young people contributed to other issues, like obesity.

He said: “Talking about after after school things, talking about shopping centres being closed a lot, that is one of the reasons we have such an obesity crisis as children are often just hanging around the chip shops.”

Analysis conducted by the Centre for Health and Public Interest estimated the companies nationally would have generated a £270 million profit from tax payer money for schools between 2017 and 2020.