Surgo chairman Ian Walker has written to the Prime Minister highlighting the frustrations of regional contractors frozen-out of education jobs.

Walker said: “As regional contractors we are the companies who invest in our areas, we use local supply chains, we train local people and aid local education at all levels through our apprenticeships and graduate training.

“Nationals simply plunder this good work to their own ends and destroy years of work by regional companies.”

Walker said Surgo has seen its education work “all but disappear”.

He said: “This started with the Building Schools for the Future programme from which we were barred from bidding because of bid cost and our turnover.

“When we contacted Government we were told to subcontract to the national contractors who were winning all BSF projects.

“Quite simply this does not work.  The conditions of contract used by them are too onerous for regional contractors or subcontractors to accept.

“Clearly there are many who have gone down this route and many have found to their cost what working for a national contractor is like.

“This was followed by the setting up of the framework agreement for academies, Partnership for Schools

“Again, despite our exemplary record of building academies, we were excluded from the framework list.

“All the contractors chosen were national contractors and again many chosen had no experience of building academies at all.”

Walker is hoping that the Prime Minister will stick by his recent pledge to open Government contracts to smaller companies and allow Surgo to bid for new academy contracts in the north east.

The decline in education work has seen Surgo’s turnover fall from a peak of £60m to £36m this year.