School Building Conditions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 21st September 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Robin Walker)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on securing this debate and speaking up for the school that he himself attended. He has made a passionate and clear case.

I also take this opportunity to say how pleased I am to be addressing the Chamber today as the Minister for school standards. I am looking forward to working alongside the new Minister for the school system, Baroness Barran, to ensure that our schools are working effectively and to provide every child with the best start in life.

As a constituency MP who has written over the years to the Department about a number of condition issues, I have great sympathy with where the hon. Gentleman is coming from. I recognise also that he says that this is an exceptional case.

I recognise that well maintained buildings are essential to support high-quality education so that pupils gain the knowledge, skills and qualifications they need. All pupils deserve an effective and safe environment to learn in, which is why maintaining and improving the condition of our school estate is a Government priority. The Department does not directly own or manage the school estate, but it has an important stewardship role and we are focused on supporting those responsible for school buildings to improve schools throughout the country. We do that through annual capital funding, delivering rebuilding programmes and offering guidance and support for the sector.

[Mr Sheerman]

What is the Department going to do about the quality? Who gets on the list of people who are reputable enough and have enough of a track record to be good contractors? Is it not time we have the good list and the not-so-good list and that those come from the Department because it has so much knowledge about who is in the contracting industry?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman speaks from his enormous experience and he raises a sensible point. It is for the Department to work with local authorities and the various commissioning bodies to ensure they are working with the most reputable people. We all know—and successive Governments have worked with—some businesses that do not succeed.

In the case of Carillion, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish has given some shocking examples of the way it behaved, particularly with regard to the playing fields. That should not have been the case. The hon. Gentleman has raised the condition issues facing a specific primary school in his constituency. I understand the challenge the school is facing with its buildings, many as a result of the refurbishment and the expansion carried out by the local authority with Carillion in 2015, about three years before the company went into liquidation.

I recognise that Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council can no longer pursue Carillion for redress on that project, following its liquidation in 2018. It has invested its own capital funding to address issues at the school over recent years. As the hon. Gentleman said, the former Parliamentary Under-Secretary with responsibility for the school system recently met him and representatives from the council to discuss those issues. I have been speaking to her successor today. I alerted her to the debate and can assure the hon. Gentleman that she is determined to deliver for the school system in a way that achieves value for money but also delivers according to need.

Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council has assured us that the school is currently safe and operational. I know, however, that a number of issues remain, such as leaking roofs, uneven floors, inadequately installed fire doors and, most significantly, the inadequate drainage that has led to repeated flooding. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Department will continue to engage with the council and, where appropriate, with the Environment Agency and local water boards to consider the wider level of surface water flood risk within the schools and what support would be required. We look forward to reviewing the detailed condition reports from the council once they have been submitted. I checked with officials ahead of the debate: we have not seen them yet, but we are certainly happy to make sure that they are properly engaged with.

I reassure the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish that the Government treat every school throughout England on a consistent basis. As I will set out, our condition funding and rebuilding programmes are targeted at schools in the worst condition, regardless of which constituency they are in and whether they are academy trusts or local authority maintained.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I perfectly accept what the Minister is saying, but does he recognise that one of the flaws of the condition survey is that it is basically sending somebody to look at the school? Aesthetically, Russell Scott looks modern—fit for purpose, wonderful—but we do not have to scratch very hard to see that that is not really the case. However, it was given an A grading by the school condition survey.

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point; I was just coming to that. Our school condition allocations are based on a consistent way, regarding the relative condition of schools. The data provides a consistent picture of relative condition, helping to inform funding allocations. We recognise, though, that it is a non-invasive survey and that does not assess structural issues, for example, which appear to be the issue in this case. It is not intended to be a substitute for the more detailed condition reports that local authorities use to prioritise investment across their schools, based on local knowledge.

We are currently consulting on the approach to prioritising schools for future rounds of the new school rebuilding programme and we expect there to be opportunities for evidence of severe condition needs to be submitted for consideration for that programme. More broadly, I am pleased that six schools in Tameside have benefited from new or refurbished buildings through the Department’s priority school rebuilding programme. In 2021-22, Tameside council also received an annual school condition allocation of £1.3 million to address condition issues at its schools and, over the past five years, it has received £9.1 million in total.[Official Report, 23 September 2021, Vol. 701, c. 2MC.] In February 2021, we announced that Tameside will receive £6.3 million to provide new school places needed in 2023.

[Rachael Maskell]

I want to refer back to All Saints school. The school was inspected following my meeting with Baroness Berridge, and although it was acknowledged that it had significant premises challenges, it has not yet progressed on to a capital funding programme. Will the Minister look at how a school such as All Saints can go forward in that programme?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady has made her case very clearly, and I can assure her that officials have been engaging with the diocese about the school. I am certainly happy to make sure that my ministerial counterpart in the Lords, who is responsible for this area, follows through on that commitment.

The Department expects schools and those responsible for school buildings to manage their estate in an efficient and effective way, working proactively to comply with the relevant regulations, and to plan maintenance programmes. That is why we are supporting schools with advice, tools and resources such as good estate management and guidance on managing asbestos. We also provide support to get best value, including free access to our procurement frameworks.

I move on to how the Department provides support in maintaining and improving the condition of the wider school estate. Responsibility for identifying and addressing concerns in schools lies with the relevant local authorities, academy trusts or voluntary aided school bodies. They can prioritise available resources and funding to keep schools open and safe, based on local knowledge of their estates. Day-to-day maintenance, checks and minor repairs are typically funded from school revenue; we also provide annual capital funding to schools and those responsible for school buildings so that they can invest in improving the condition of their buildings and meet their duties to maintain a safe school estate.

The Department has allocated £11.3 billion in condition funding since 2015, including £1.8 billion in the financial year 2021-22. We also provided an additional £560 million in 2020-21 for essential maintenance and upgrades, on top of more than £1.4 billion already allocated during that year. Schools access capital funding to improve the condition of their building through school condition allocations or the condition improvement fund. School condition allocations are provided to eligible responsible bodies to invest in their schools on the basis of local knowledge. Since 2015, allocations have been informed by consistent data on the condition of buildings across England, so that funding is targeted to where it is needed most. Every school is treated consistently.

The condition improvement fund is an annual bidding round for eligible schools. Bids are robustly assessed against published criteria, and in 2021-22 the funds supported 1,400 projects at 1,200 schools and sixth-form colleges. The fund gives the highest priority to condition projects that address compliance and health and safety issues, which include fire protection systems, gas safety, electrical safety or emergency asbestos removal.

We also provide schools with annual devolved formula capital allocations to spend on smaller projects or purchases in line with their priorities. Capital funding for future years will be determined by the spending review, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, as well as the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell) and for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), who intervened on him, for the extent to which their speeches inform and reinforce our submission to that review.

In addition to annual condition funding, we centrally deliver major rebuilding programmes. The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that the Prime Minister announced a new school rebuilding programme last June; we have confirmed the first 100 schools in the programme as part of a commitment to 500 projects over the next decade. The programme will transform the education of thousands of pupils around the country, and continue to benefit children and their teachers for decades to come. It will replace poor condition and ageing school buildings with modern facilities, and all new buildings delivered through the programme will be net zero carbon in operation, contributing to the Government’s ambitious carbon reduction targets.

The first projects include primary and secondary schools, as well as a sixth-form college and special and alternative provision settings. One example is Lytham St Annes High School in Lancashire. The original school building was built in the 1950s, with later extensions in the ’60s and ’70s. The Department is funding the replacement of the main building and sports hall, with a separate sports hall in a new build two-storey block.

The programme represents a substantial investment in schools in the midlands and the north of England, with 70 of the first 100 projects located in those regions. We have published the methodology used to prioritise the first 100 schools, and we are consulting on how schools could be prioritised for inclusion in the future. We want that to be inclusive and effective. The consultation closes on 8 October, and we will set out plans for future rounds of the programme in 2022. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish will appreciate that I cannot make specific commitments about future rounds of the funding, but he has set out his position very clearly and placed it firmly on the record. It will certainly be taken into account.

The hon. Gentleman asked for a named official—a point of contact—and I am very happy to follow up on that after the debate; he will understand why I will not name an official on the Floor of the Chamber. However, my understanding is that conversations about both the application for support and the contingency planning are going on between my officials at the DFE and those people at Tameside council. I am certainly happy to take this forward, and I congratulate him on making his case so strongly.

Question put and agreed to.