Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will undertake an independent evaluation on what the evidential basis is for his Department's proposed test standard of BS 7176 for school noticeboards and if he will publish the results of that evaluation.

The Department is currently working with independent testing houses on developing and assessing the protocols for meeting the proposed British Standard for specifying noticeboards in schools. The Department will, in due course, issue a short note to responsible bodies on these new standards, which will also be included in the updated 'Building Bulletin 100: Design for Fire Safety in Schools' in 2020.

The Department’s output specification is primarily for use in setting construction and design standards for centrally delivered school building projects and is not a statutory guidance document. This specification is available to other responsible bodies in support of any school building construction activities.