Birmingham City Council could be forced to foot the bill for job cuts at schools switching to academies, the authority’s education chief has warned.

Documents seen by the Birmingham Post show growing concern that schools considering academy status could force the council to bear the cost of any redundancies before leaving local authority control.

The move was branded “immoral” by Coun Les Lawrence, cabinet member for children, young people and families, who said that at least one city school could leave the council with a redundancy bill before becoming an academy.

Academies are publicly funded independent schools, which are free from local authority and national government control.

Nearly 30 Birmingham schools are now known as academies or have declared an interest in moving to academy status.

Minutes from a meeting of the Birmingham Schools Forum which took place in March read: “Cllr Lawrence ... also voiced concern that some schools that are moving to academy status are now restructuring and the redundancy burden will fall to the LA [local authority].

“Cllr Lawrence said ‘this is immoral’.”

Coun Lawrence, who declined to name the school, predicted it could be a “growing problem” over the next two to three years.

“It is unjust and unfair,” said Coun Lawrence. “I think it is right and proper to alert parents and the public that this is an additional cost to the local authorities of schools becoming academies which is an inappropriate cost.

“Not only do schools receive additional monies, protected monies, but they can also carry out a restructuring of their organisation which will be to their benefit, but at the detriment of the local authority.

“My concern is that if a school has already indicated by way of an expression or statement of interest they want to become an academy and then decide they want to restructure, then this will be left to the local authority to pay for before they are no longer a local authority school.”

Schools with academy status can set their own pay and conditions for staff, exercise freedoms concerning the delivery of the curriculum and also have the ability to change the length of their terms and school days.

The original flagship academies programme championed by the Labour government required external sponsors to provided up to £2 million funding towards the cost of a new school.