Schools: Capital Investment

(asked on 12th December 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools which had an unsuccessful application for capital funding in the last five years, have not received any capital funding over that period, up to and including 2022-23; and if she will provide a list of those schools.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 20th December 2022

All schools receive some capital funding annually from the Department to support them in maintaining their estates. There are no schools that have received no capital funding in the last five years.

The Department committed £1.8 billion for improving the condition of school buildings in 2022/23. Local Authorities, larger multi academy trusts, and larger voluntary aided (VA) bodies receive an annual School Condition Allocation (SCA) to invest in priorities across the schools for which they are responsible. This is a formulaic allocation for which responsible bodies do not need to apply to the Department for.

Smaller academy trusts, smaller VA bodies, and sixth form colleges not part of bodies eligible for SCA can bid to the annual Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) for condition projects. CIF eligible schools with urgent condition issues that pose the threat of immediate school closure and that cannot wait until the next round of CIF are eligible to apply for Urgent Capital Support (UCS). The Department does not publish details of unsuccessful applicants to CIF or to UCS.

All schools that are eligible for condition funding, including those eligible to apply to CIF, also receive individual allocations of devolved formula capital (DFC) to spend on smaller capital projects. Like SCA, DFC is a formulaic allocation paid each financial year.

The Department recently announced that eligible schools and sixth form colleges will receive an allocation from an additional £447 million in capital funding in 2022/23. This is for improvements to buildings and facilities, prioritising works to improve energy efficiency.

The school rebuilding programme will carry out major rebuilding and refurbishment projects at 500 schools across England, with buildings prioritised according to their condition.

In 2021, the Department confirmed the first 100 schools in the programme based on existing data held by the Department. No schools applied for the programme at that point.

The Department ran a nomination process in March 2022 and received nominations for 1,105 schools. 8 of these withdrew, so 1,097 nominations were assessed. 300 of these schools were provisionally confirmed for the programme, based on the condition of their buildings. 61 in July 2022 and a further 239 schools on 16 December. 797 nominations were not taken forward. The list of successful schools and the full list of schools that were nominated can be accessed on GOV.UK.

In the past five years, the Department held two rounds of the Selective Schools Expansion Fund, providing capital funding to provide new places under certain restrictions and criteria. A total of £63.6 million was provided to 22 expansion projects. Lists of all applicants and successful applicants are published for the 2018/19 and 2019/20 rounds and are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/selective-schools-expansion-fund-successful-applications-2018-to-2019 and: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/selective-schools-expansion-fund-successful-applications-2019-to-2020.

£24 million was provided in 2019 through the bidding round to provide new school based nursery places for disadvantaged children. A list of successful and unsuccessful applicants was published and can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-nurseries-capital-fund-list-of-application-outcomes.

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