A Harrow MP has accused the council of "failing dismally" to secure Government cash for primary schools in the borough, because its application was full of errors.

Bob Blackman, MP for Harrow East, says he received a letter from education secretary Michael Gove, which points the finger directly at Harrow Council over the lack of funding for primary school places.

Last month, the Department of Education allocated £600 million of funding to schools across the country, based on figures supplied by individual councils, but Harrow received nothing. Brent was allocated £31m, the highest out of all 314 boroughs that applied for funding.

Harrow Council previously told the Harrow Times that it had decided to undertake a re-calculation of its figures to attain the best possible deal for the people in Harrow, and so its needs were being reassessed.

Today, Mr Blackman accused the council of “letting local people down” over the issue.

The Harrow East MP said: “The letter I received from Mr Gove shows that Harrow Council’s original erroneous figures means we would have only qualified for £120,000.

“Mr Gove makes it clear that it’s the council’s fault we got to this stage, but nobody will admit that. The council keep trying to blame everyone else in sight, when this is their responsibility.

They failed dismally to get their facts together.”

He says that there are 240 new children across the borough to allocate places for each year, and he is concerned there won’t be enough money to accommodate them all in the 2013 and 2014 intakes.

Mr Blackman was also concerned that while Harrow Council spent time “dragging their feet” over this, other councils were busy creating new classrooms and employing new teachers.

Mr Blackman added: “It’s clearly a lack of competence on their part. Their one duty is to ensure they have the information and data and they couldn’t even do that.

“It’s absurd and this has ruined things for our children for the time being, because until we get our allocations they are missing out.”

The Department of Education is currently in talks with Harrow Council about the correct amount of funding it needs, but Mr Blackman expressed extra concerns over where this money would come from.

He said: “Every single last penny of the £600m that was up for grabs has been allocated, and we can’t take money from people we’ve already given it to. They are going to have to see if there is any other money that can be allocated to Harrow in that case.”

Harrow Times is awaiting comment from Harrow Council.