Seventeen law firms signed up to advise local authorities on the Labour government’s lucrative school building project will soon learn whether or not their legal panel is to be scrapped.

The Department for Education (DfE)’s £55bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) project was abolished in July by education secretary Michael Gove, who simultaneously unveiled a review of capital investment in pre-schools, schools, colleges and sixth forms, which is due to report later this year.

Work on the BSF project was conducted by firms on the panel of Partnerships for Schools, the body that handles capital investment in schools on behalf of the government. A DfE spokesman said this week that the future of the panel is also being considered as part of the review. Sources from firms on the panel indicated that it might be cut altogether.

The firms on the panel are: national firms Addleshaw Goddard, DLA Piper, Eversheds, Pinsent Masons and Mills & Reeve; City firms Beachcroft, Nabarro, Norton Rose and Trowers & Hamlins; London firms Sharpe Pritchard and TPP Law; south-west firms Bevan Brittan and Burges Salmon; northern firms Walker Morris and Ward Hadaway; Birmingham firm Wragge & Co; and Newcastle’s Dickinson Dees.

A spokesman for Partnerships for Schools said that the results of the review will determine the use of the panel beyond the BSF programme.