EDUCATION bosses have been hit with a £150million bill to bring schools in the county up to standard.

And £88million needs to be spent within the next 12 months to remove health and safety problems within schools, a report has said.

The bill was revealed as education bosses at Lancashire County Council published their first Asset Management Plan.

It is now hoped that county council bosses can work together with head teachers and pool resources to get the work done quickly.

The Government requested the document and county council bosses are hoping it will provide the money needed to do the work.

Such co-operation, said Coun Alan Whittaker, cabinet member for education and young people, would mean larger schools could tackle big projects while smaller schools could carry out run-of-the-mill repairs they couldn't otherwise afford.

He blamed the high bill to the fact many RoSLA buildings -- Raising of the School Leaving Age -- were coming to the end of their natural life, some 40 years after they were built.

The Asset Management Plan is set out in three sections: Condition, Sufficiency and Suitability of Buildings.

Some £29.5million needs to be spent on buildings which have 'hazardous' faults or major 'health and safety' issues -- of which the report states £24.7million must be spent within the next 12 months.

A further £116.3million needs spending on removal of portable classrooms, improvements to roofs, walls, windows and cladding of schools, boiler and heater replacement and electrical rewiring.

Some £63.9million needs to be spent over the next year, according to the asset management plan.

But despite the vast amount of cash required, Coun Whittaker believes the county can do well.

Some £70million was secured by the county council before Christmas to spend on improving schools.

And Coun Whittaker said: "By producing this plan, for the first time we can see what needs spending, where and it is available for all to see.

"Education funding is very complex. Some comes to us, some goes to schools and there are extra pots of cash available.

"Basically, we want to create one capital pot for Lancashire and then help schools improve as a result.

"We will help fund smaller, rural, schools who perhaps couldn't afford repairs and also the bigger schools which need facilities to replace RoSLA buildings, which were thrown up at short notice in the 1960s when the school leaving age was raised.

"We have a lot of those."

He added: "I do not want to make a political point out of this, but education has been underfunded for years. I can remember when there wasn't even the money for minor repairs. As a result, the big work has stacked up."

A further £8.5million is needed to improve the suitability of schools by providing new facilities within the school.