Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how schools in Bedfordshire can apply to the Great British Energy Solar project.

The department and Great British Energy have launched an £80 million partnership to provide rooftop solar panels across 200 schools and colleges.

This investment will cut school energy bills, support our transition to clean energy and create new opportunities for students.

The project demonstrates our commitment to making Britain a clean energy superpower while supporting educational excellence.

With 200 projects in this first year of the programme, the department is not proposing a bidding round to select schools and colleges. Each of the nine government office regions in England will have a minimum of ten schools and there will be larger clusters of schools in the North West, North East and West Midlands in areas of deprivation.

Each cluster will include a further education college, which will also work with the contractors appointed to promote careers in renewables and construction to students and support growth in the workforce.

Once the delivery partners are appointed, they will work through a long list, the department has devised, of possible schools based on criteria including deprivation, roof condition and location to produce the final list of projects. The delivery partners will visit the schools and colleges and survey the site before final decisions are made on which to include.

The programme has been designed so that it could be scaled up in the future. Any funding for future years, however, will be decided as part of the multi-year spending review.